Thanks to FundScience for Helping Us Sponsor an Optogenetics Design Project
05.6.11 by Tim
Thanks to all who donated! The mission of FundScience is to get the public directly involved in funding scientific enterprise, so, of course, where did the $512.20 we raised actually go? Did it dump right into indirect costs? No way! Our organization develops low-cost neurotechnology, and the support of FundScience helped enable the building of an optogenetics prototype for a senior final design project we sponsored at the University of Michigan. What is optogenetics? It’s an exciting technology, developed in the early 2000?s, of stimulating neurons with light. The neurons in fruit flies and mice are modified using genetic engineering techniques, and the creatures have light-sensitive ion channels. It’s a rather useful technology (just ask any neuroscientist), but to date has only been available at advanced research institutions. But because of you, not anymore. We have made preliminary inroads towards making optogenetics a tool even high school students can use! For our prototype to allow portable demonstrations of optogenetics in transgenic fruit flies, we needed a neuroamplifier, a micromanipulator, a microscope, and LED light controller. Backyard Brains has its own amplifier (the SpikerBox), and we decided to go with an off-the-shelf inexpensive microscope rather than design our own optics. Thus, our design efforts focused on the manipulator, the LED control, and the biological preparation. We worked with five seniors in biomedical engineering (Emily, Zack, Nick, John, and Sharon, all from Southeastern Michigan) over about 12 weeks. We are happy to report we were successful in building a functional prototype that we then tested with scientist Stefan Pulver of Cornell University/University of Cambridge. Here is a picture of the prototype.
Thanks to FundScience for Helping Us Sponsor an Optogenetics Design Project
05.6.11 by Tim
Thanks to all who donated! The mission of FundScience is to get the public directly involved in funding scientific enterprise, so, of course, where did the $512.20 we raised actually go? Did it dump right into indirect costs? No way! Our organization develops low-cost neurotechnology, and the support of FundScience helped enable the building of an optogenetics prototype for a senior final design project we sponsored at the University of Michigan. What is optogenetics? It’s an exciting technology, developed in the early 2000′s, of stimulating neurons with light. The neurons in fruit flies and mice are modified using genetic engineering techniques, and the creatures have light-sensitive ion channels. It’s a rather useful technology (just ask any neuroscientist), but to date has only been available at advanced research institutions. But because of you, not anymore. We have made preliminary inroads towards making optogenetics a tool even high school students can use!
For our prototype to allow portable demonstrations of optogenetics in transgenic fruit flies, we needed a neuroamplifier, a micromanipulator, a microscope, and LED light controller. Backyard Brains has its own amplifier (the SpikerBox), and we decided to go with an off-the-shelf inexpensive microscope rather than design our own optics. Thus, our design efforts focused on the manipulator, the LED control, and the biological preparation. We worked with five seniors in biomedical engineering (Emily, Zack, Nick, John, and Sharon, all from Southeastern Michigan) over about 12 weeks. We are happy to report we were successful in building a functional prototype that we then tested with scientist Stefan Pulver of Cornell University/University of Cambridge.Here is a picture of the prototype.
On April 17th, we successfully recorded EMG’s (electromyograms) from channelrhodopsin-2 expressing fruit flies using the prototype we built. These flies have ChR expressed in their glutamatergic neurons, and when blue light is flashed upon them, the muscles in their body wall contract. Using the manipulator to place the electrode on the exposed muscle, the microscope to view the dissection, the amplifier to record EMGs, and the LED controller to flash light, we had a fully contained optogenetics rig. Below you can listen to an audio recording of light-evoked EMG. It’s noisy, but you can hear the response!
Here are the students posing with their invention!
For our second prototype, which we are currently working on, we will increase the stability of the manipulator by combining the y and x-axis with the z-axis of the manipulator. We also need to improve the iPhone application that controls the LED. The biggest weakness of our design is more biological than mechanical; the Drosophila dissection takes expertise to do well. Once the stability improves, we will begin demoing this unit to high schools. We have actually already begun demonstrations of the behavioral responses of transgenic fruit flies to blue light. See below for some investigation by students at Winans Academy in Detroit.
We thank all the donators who contributed to this project, the hard working senior design students, and our colleague Stefan Pulver for providing the fruit flies, time, and expertise. We are bootstrapping the continued development; the work continues! Below is the exact cost breakdown of the use of the funds.
We announce our “build a better SpikerBox” competition
02.7.11 by Tim
The SpikerBox has gone through 7 development cycles, but we know it can be better. Designing electronics and experiments is one of the most fun things we do here at Backyard Brains, and we now announce our Penaeidae Prize! Can you design a better SpikerBox? Deadline is May 15th, and the winner will have their name stenciled on the next run of SpikerBoxes, as well as a sponsored abstract at the 2011 Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, D.C.! Oh nascent Engineers of the world, design! Let forth your creative fury!
BYB visits a Scanning Electron Microscope
11.1.10 by Greg
Here at Backyard Brains, we often get the question “Is that leg really still alive?” to which we respond “Why yes… that’s why you hear the Spikes”. The follow up question “How does it stay alive?” was often replied with similar authority: “They have tiny holes called spiracles that allow them to ‘breathe’ through their skin”. However, that last statement never sat well with us. We’ve never seen these holes, only read about them in passing in the text books.
Enter John Mansfield from the University of Michigan Electron Microbeam Analysis Laboratory. We met John through his daughter Betsy who caught our eye a cockroach expert during an outreach event on campus. He was kind enough to let us take a closer look at the leg to see if we could find these spiracles.
The first thing John did was place the leg in the SEM and pressurize the chamber to around 1.5-2 Torr. We could look inside the SEM from a computer that was used to control the scope.
Before long, John was able to zoom in closely and snap some beautiful images of our leg… but we couldn’t find the spiracles we were searching for. Below are some of the pictures that we saw (kind of… they were B&W, so we colored the legs here to make them look cooler).
After searching for about an hour, nothing. We even brought in an expert to help us look over the images, but to no avail…
We then flipped the leg over and tried again. The spiracles had to be on the backside! Right? No! We didn’t find any. The reason, it turns out, is that there are no spiracles on the leg at all! They are only contained on the main body of the cockroach.
This remains a mystery at Backyard Brains. How can a leg stay alive and fire spikes for up to 48 hours after it has been detached? With no way to exchange CO2 and O2? We still don’t have an answer for this. We’d like to hear your theories. This could be the makings of a great science caper.
Yes, Virginia, cockroach legs do grow back.
08.4.10 by Tim
Many people have asked us if the cockroach legs we cut off and use for our experiments grow back on the respective owners. That and “the cockroach leg is still alive when removed from the body?” are the two most common questions we get, from 5 year olds up to 80 year olds.
Let a thousand neurons fire
07.30.10 by Tim
On July 20th and 21st, Backyard Brains ran part of the Health and Biomedical Engineering for Girls Camp, where, over the course of two days, 45 area high school girls learned about electronics and neuroscience. They built and soldered their own SpikerBoxes, and then used their new devices for their own neuroscience experiments. See below for a wonderful sight of brand new neuroscientists brought into existence! Watch out oh professors of the world, in 5-7 seven years you might be seeing some unusually talented graduate students.
