Synaptic integration and intrinsic firing properties of basal ganglia neurons

本财政年度，我们在实验室的组建和人员配备方面继续取得良好进展。该实验室目前有四(4)名成员，包括首席研究员(Travis Hage，博士后研究员；Rahilla Tarfa，研究生研究员；以及Renshu Sherry Zhang，研究技术员)。黑格博士和塔尔法女士都在进行研究，重点是中脑多巴胺神经元的兴奋性和突触整合。艾莉森·吉拉索尔是实验室首批加入的成员之一，她最近在今年夏天完成了毕业后的IRTA奖学金。她目前正在顶尖的神经科学项目加州大学旧金山分校开始她的第一年研究生学习。今年夏天，我们邀请了一名高中生加兰·肯尼迪，他完成了一个项目，并在2013年NIH夏季海报日上展示了他的作品海报。关于未来的人员配置，我们已经确定并成功聘请了第二名博士后研究员丽贝卡·埃文斯，他将于2014年1月加入实验室。我们还在招聘毕业后的IRTA，他们应该很快就会开始工作。 我们也扩大了我们的实验能力。我们继续改进我们的膜片钳设置，增加用于光遗传学实验的额外LED光源。我们还被批准在小鼠身上进行颅内注射。使用这个程序，我们已经能够对特定的细胞群体进行逆行标记。此外，我们已经成功地在两个感兴趣的大脑核团中表达了光激活蛋白--通道视紫红质。与这一策略并行的是，我们正在使用几个Cre小鼠品系来针对基因定义的细胞类型进行表达。包括我们的Cre品系，我们目前培育了11个小鼠品系。其中一个品系是一种新的条件性基因敲除小鼠，该品系的创始人是在詹姆斯·皮克尔博士的帮助下在NIMH转基因核心设施中培育出来的。我们还参与了与Ellen Sidransky博士(美国国立卫生研究院)和Marie-France Martin-EauClaire博士(Aix马赛大学)的合作项目。

This fiscal year, we continued to make good progress in setting up and staffing the laboratory. There are currently four (4) members of the lab including the Principal Investigator (Travis Hage, postdoctoral fellow; Rahilla Tarfa, graduate fellow; and Renshu Sherry Zhang, research technician). Both Dr. Hage and Ms. Tarfa are performing studies that are focused on excitability and synaptic integration in midbrain dopamine neurons. One of the first joining members of the lab, Allison Girasole, recently completed her Post-Baccalaureate IRTA fellowship this summer. She is currently starting her first year of graduate school at a top neuroscience program, UCSF. This summer, we hosted a high school student, Garland Kennedy, who completed a project and presented a poster of his work at the 2013 NIH Summer Poster Day. For future staffing, we have identified and successfully hired a second postdoctoral fellow, Rebekah Evans, who will be joining the lab in January 2014. We are also in the process of hiring Post-Baccalaureate IRTA who should be starting soon as well. We have expanded our experimental capabilities as well. We have continued to refine our patch-clamp setups, adding additional LED light sources which we use for optogenetics experiments. We have also been approved to perform intracranial injections in mice. Using this procedure, we have been able to retrogradely label particular cell populations. In addition, we have been successful in expressing of the light-activated protein, channelrhodopsin, in two brain nuclei that are of interest. In parallel with this strategy, we are using several Cre mouse lines to target expression to genetically-defined cell types. Including our Cre lines, we are currently breeding 11 mouse lines. One of these lines is a novel conditional knockout mouse, and the founders for this line were generated in the NIMH Transgenic Core Facility with the help of Dr. James Pickel. We are also participating in collaborative projects with Dr. Ellen Sidransky (NIH) and with Dr. Marie-France Martin-Eauclaire (Aix Marseille Universite).