Synaptic integration and intrinsic firing properties of basal ganglia neurons

本财政年度，我们在设立实验室及配备人手方面继续取得良好进展。实验室目前有四（4）名成员，包括主要研究者（Travis Hage，博士后研究员; Rahilla Tarfa，研究生研究员; Renshu Sherry Zhang，研究技术员）。Hage博士和Tarfa女士都在进行专注于中脑多巴胺神经元的兴奋性和突触整合的研究。该实验室的第一批成员之一，艾莉森Girasole，最近完成了她的学士后IRTA奖学金今年夏天。她目前正在开始她的第一年研究生院在一个顶级神经科学计划，加州大学旧金山分校。今年夏天，我们接待了一位高中生，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。对于未来的人员配备，我们已经确定并成功聘请了第二位博士后研究员Rebekah Evans，她将于2014年1月加入实验室。我们也在招聘学士后IRTA谁应该很快开始的过程中。 我们也扩大了实验能力。我们继续改进我们的膜片钳设置，增加额外的LED光源，用于光遗传学实验。我们还被批准在小鼠中进行颅内注射。使用这种方法，我们已经能够逆行标记特定的细胞群。此外，我们已经成功地在两个感兴趣的脑核中表达了光激活蛋白，通道视紫红质。与此策略并行，我们正在使用几种Cre小鼠系将表达靶向遗传定义的细胞类型。包括我们的Cre品系在内，我们目前正在培育11个小鼠品系。其中一个品系是一种新的条件性敲除小鼠，该品系的创建者是在James Pickel博士的帮助下在NIMH转基因核心设施中产生的。我们还参与了与Ellen Sidransky博士（NIH）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).