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Antarctica
In January 2018, I traveled to McMurdo Research Station, Antarctica, as part of an NSF Advanced Training Program for early career scientists (link to program). The focus of the course was learning about biological adaptations to environmental change, and getting insights into the logistics required to successfully complete research in this environment. We also learnt about early Antarctic exploration, visited Discovery Hut (Hut Point) and Scott's Hut (Cape Evans), and learnt how to work around penguin and seal interruptions to our fieldwork! A couple of my classmates were really great at blogging about the course: read more on Luana Lins and Kirsten Meyer's blogs!
My trip to McMurdo was covered in UF Entomology and Nematology - click here to read the short report!
(Posted 25 September 2015)
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(Posted 25 June 2015)
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The first part of the week started off poorly with rental vehicle issues and baboons getting exceedingly close to stealing our passports (while in the no-man’s land between the South African and Lesotho border posts – eeeek!). However, things turned out well and a week in the mountains with only one minor rain interruption and no summer thunderstorms was absolute bliss! The weather was so perfect in fact that we finished our work a day early which allowed us to play “tourist-tourist” and visit the Bushman Rock Art of the area (http://www.sanilodge.co.za/DArock.html). We also educated our fellow hikers on the beetles found under dung along the trial… in all honesty, after hunting through dung all week we just couldn’t resist taking a look to see what we could find!
On a side note, while my entomologically-inclined field assistant taught me lots about insects in my quest to become a “real entomologist”, he failed to warn me about the nasty bite of a giant beetle I was trying to catch for his personal collection! Beetle 1 – Leigh 0
(Posted 19 February 2015)
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(Posted 19 April 2014)
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(Posted 14 October 2013)
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(Posted 4 June 2013)
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(Posted 8 February 2013)
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Antarctica
In January 2018, I traveled to McMurdo Research Station, Antarctica, as part of an NSF Advanced Training Program for early career scientists (link to program). The focus of the course was learning about biological adaptations to environmental change, and getting insights into the logistics required to successfully complete research in this environment. We also learnt about early Antarctic exploration, visited Discovery Hut (Hut Point) and Scott's Hut (Cape Evans), and learnt how to work around penguin and seal interruptions to our fieldwork! A couple of my classmates were really great at blogging about the course: read more on Luana Lins and Kirsten Meyer's blogs!
My trip to McMurdo was covered in UF Entomology and Nematology - click here to read the short report!
(Posted March 2018)
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2015 wrap-up
As the year rolls to an end, I can’t help but think “Wow! What a year!”. This year has had it all: Twelve days in Denmark, eleven Gators sighted, ten Insect species studied, nine modules lectured, eight months in Stellies, seven papers reviewed, six days of fieldwork, five days of hockey, four days in Vegas, three published papers, two thousand dead Drosophila, and a move across the world! J
Two papers have come out in the last month or so. My 2nd last PhD paper has been published in Journal of Insect Physiology. Here, we aimed to uncover the mechanisms underlying cross tolerance between hypoxia and cold using false codling moth larvae, a pest of economic importance in southern Africa. We found interactions between low temperature and hypoxia (low oxygen) responses, but not between low- and high temperatures. We also had our review on oxygen limitation published in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A. If you’ve ever wondered how oxygen can influence thermal limits and wondered whether the theory applies to arthropods, start reading! J Links to both these papers are available from my publications page. If your institution doesn’t have access, feel free to mail me and I’ll send a pdf copy.
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2015 wrap-up
As the year rolls to an end, I can’t help but think “Wow! What a year!”. This year has had it all: Twelve days in Denmark, eleven Gators sighted, ten Insect species studied, nine modules lectured, eight months in Stellies, seven papers reviewed, six days of fieldwork, five days of hockey, four days in Vegas, three published papers, two thousand dead Drosophila, and a move across the world! J
Two papers have come out in the last month or so. My 2nd last PhD paper has been published in Journal of Insect Physiology. Here, we aimed to uncover the mechanisms underlying cross tolerance between hypoxia and cold using false codling moth larvae, a pest of economic importance in southern Africa. We found interactions between low temperature and hypoxia (low oxygen) responses, but not between low- and high temperatures. We also had our review on oxygen limitation published in Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A. If you’ve ever wondered how oxygen can influence thermal limits and wondered whether the theory applies to arthropods, start reading! J Links to both these papers are available from my publications page. If your institution doesn’t have access, feel free to mail me and I’ll send a pdf copy.
So two years after graduating, the last outstanding (in more than one way :) ) PhD chapter was combined with some post-doc metabolomics work and is in the publication pipeline. Fingers crossed it’ll be a Happy New Year publication wise. I will also present this work at the upcoming SICB meeting in Portland in January. All things considered, it should be an exciting 2016!
(Posted 21 December 2015)
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Getting settled in "Gator-ville"
After completing my Stellenbosch University postdoc, I've moved across the world to start a new postdoc in the Hahn Lab at the University of Florida. Trading the Stellenbosch winelands for Gainesville, Florida means that my resident towns most renowned drink is now Gatorade, instead of the Boland wines, and the University mascot has become fiercer: Pokkel the squirrel would be a tasty snack for Albert and Alberta Gator! Some things are scarily similar: students still ride scooters (called mopeds here, not poegies!), and umbrellas and gumboots are sometimes required, although now in a different season. I truly felt like a Floridian after getting caught in monsoon-like rain with only my umbrella for cover! J
After completing my Stellenbosch University postdoc, I've moved across the world to start a new postdoc in the Hahn Lab at the University of Florida. Trading the Stellenbosch winelands for Gainesville, Florida means that my resident towns most renowned drink is now Gatorade, instead of the Boland wines, and the University mascot has become fiercer: Pokkel the squirrel would be a tasty snack for Albert and Alberta Gator! Some things are scarily similar: students still ride scooters (called mopeds here, not poegies!), and umbrellas and gumboots are sometimes required, although now in a different season. I truly felt like a Floridian after getting caught in monsoon-like rain with only my umbrella for cover! J
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| Greeting Albert and Alberta |
After the admin deluge subsides, my projects here will continue along an integrative and comparative biology route looking at the molecular mechanisms underlying organismal tolerance to environmental stressors. This time, I’ll be adding ionizing radiation to the list of stressors I’ll be investigating, along with my usual favourites: low temperature and oxygen.
Next week Friday I’ll celebrate having been in Gainesville for a month already. And I’ll celebrate in style... in Vegas! J I’ll be there attending the Sable Systems Introduction to Animal Respirometry course to learn more about measuring metabolic rates.
Lastly, I just had a paper from my PhD accepted into Journal of Insect Physiology: “Physiological and molecular mechanisms associated with cross tolerance between hypoxia and low temperature in Thaumatotibia leucotreta." More to follow once it’s available online!
Next week Friday I’ll celebrate having been in Gainesville for a month already. And I’ll celebrate in style... in Vegas! J I’ll be there attending the Sable Systems Introduction to Animal Respirometry course to learn more about measuring metabolic rates.
Lastly, I just had a paper from my PhD accepted into Journal of Insect Physiology: “Physiological and molecular mechanisms associated with cross tolerance between hypoxia and low temperature in Thaumatotibia leucotreta." More to follow once it’s available online!
(Posted 25 September 2015)
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Postdoc pet project published
Every spring, thousands of children in South Africa rear silkworms (Bombyx mori) as pets, while thousands of parents desperately comb surrounding neighborhoods for mulberry leaves. Apart from teaching children about basic biology of metamorphosis, silkworms can be enticed to spin silken bookmarks in a variety of shapes (great for unique gifts!). The last two springs, I have regressed back to my childhood, and have kept a culture of silkworms for research purposes. Initially a student in our department had too many silkworms and we realized that we could obtain many more off Gumtree (our South African version of Craig’s list) from parents desperate to reduce the number of silkworms that their kids were looking after! This meant that obtaining sufficient numbers to complete a set of experiments was easy; the hard part was collecting enough mulberry leaves to maintain a couple hundred silkworms. Thank goodness we have mulberry trees on campus! After successfully rearing the silkworms, we then had to decide what research question we wanted to use them to answer…
Every spring, thousands of children in South Africa rear silkworms (Bombyx mori) as pets, while thousands of parents desperately comb surrounding neighborhoods for mulberry leaves. Apart from teaching children about basic biology of metamorphosis, silkworms can be enticed to spin silken bookmarks in a variety of shapes (great for unique gifts!). The last two springs, I have regressed back to my childhood, and have kept a culture of silkworms for research purposes. Initially a student in our department had too many silkworms and we realized that we could obtain many more off Gumtree (our South African version of Craig’s list) from parents desperate to reduce the number of silkworms that their kids were looking after! This meant that obtaining sufficient numbers to complete a set of experiments was easy; the hard part was collecting enough mulberry leaves to maintain a couple hundred silkworms. Thank goodness we have mulberry trees on campus! After successfully rearing the silkworms, we then had to decide what research question we wanted to use them to answer…
In my first paper from my postdoc research, we used the silkworms to investigate the roles of oxygen supply and demand in setting thermal limits. We found that larvae, but not pupae, were oxygen limited and we also found that adding moisture to hypoxia could alleviate the oxygen limitation effect. This paper is out this month in Journal of Experimental Biology and was covered by Kathryn Knight in her Inside JEB column. (http://jeb.biologists.org/content/218/11/1616.full).
(Posted 25 June 2015)
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They call this work?
Last week, I traipsed up and down the Sani Pass in the Drakensburg hunting for dung beetles. I still cannot believe that I’m lucky enough to call this work! Together with my field assistant Clancy “Adrenaline Mountain Goat” Short, we set traps and wrangled beetles in one of South Africa’s most beautiful locations. Long walks to the top were rewarded with never-ending views and a drink in the highest pub in Africa!
Last week, I traipsed up and down the Sani Pass in the Drakensburg hunting for dung beetles. I still cannot believe that I’m lucky enough to call this work! Together with my field assistant Clancy “Adrenaline Mountain Goat” Short, we set traps and wrangled beetles in one of South Africa’s most beautiful locations. Long walks to the top were rewarded with never-ending views and a drink in the highest pub in Africa!
The first part of the week started off poorly with rental vehicle issues and baboons getting exceedingly close to stealing our passports (while in the no-man’s land between the South African and Lesotho border posts – eeeek!). However, things turned out well and a week in the mountains with only one minor rain interruption and no summer thunderstorms was absolute bliss! The weather was so perfect in fact that we finished our work a day early which allowed us to play “tourist-tourist” and visit the Bushman Rock Art of the area (http://www.sanilodge.co.za/DArock.html). We also educated our fellow hikers on the beetles found under dung along the trial… in all honesty, after hunting through dung all week we just couldn’t resist taking a look to see what we could find!
On a side note, while my entomologically-inclined field assistant taught me lots about insects in my quest to become a “real entomologist”, he failed to warn me about the nasty bite of a giant beetle I was trying to catch for his personal collection! Beetle 1 – Leigh 0
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| Clancy hard at work |
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From the Home of the Genome to the Theatre of Dreams…
June/July this year was spent enjoying an exciting and inspiring trip to the UK. First up, I attended the Wellcome Trust Advanced Course in Functional Genomics and Systems Biology held at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton (Cambridge, UK) where I brushed up on the genomic skills I last understood during my Honours degree. Given the advances in the field in 5 years, each and every day brought new information. Nerd alert: The opportunity to visit the “home of the genome” and see a room full of sequencing machines was amazing! Together with the other course participants from far and wide (working on everything from cells to cows!), I learnt RNAi, microarray and RNAseq techniques together with the bioinformatics needed to turn the masses of data into understandable, publishable data. Not exceptionally useful for my future career, but equally challenging were learning to play croquet and punting on the river Cam. While I didn’t lose my pole or get it stuck in a tree (unlike one of my fellow punters), I think I’ll stick to playing hockey and leave the punting to the Brits!
June/July this year was spent enjoying an exciting and inspiring trip to the UK. First up, I attended the Wellcome Trust Advanced Course in Functional Genomics and Systems Biology held at the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton (Cambridge, UK) where I brushed up on the genomic skills I last understood during my Honours degree. Given the advances in the field in 5 years, each and every day brought new information. Nerd alert: The opportunity to visit the “home of the genome” and see a room full of sequencing machines was amazing! Together with the other course participants from far and wide (working on everything from cells to cows!), I learnt RNAi, microarray and RNAseq techniques together with the bioinformatics needed to turn the masses of data into understandable, publishable data. Not exceptionally useful for my future career, but equally challenging were learning to play croquet and punting on the river Cam. While I didn’t lose my pole or get it stuck in a tree (unlike one of my fellow punters), I think I’ll stick to playing hockey and leave the punting to the Brits!
After the course it was off to Manchester for the annual SEB meeting. WOW! What a fantastic meeting. I presented some of my new postdoc research in the symposium on “What sets the limits”. This symposium was highly relevant to my current research, and although there were complaints that it involved too many oxygen-related talks, that suited me just fine! In addition to the talks, the meeting provided a great opportunity to catch up with friends and meet loads of scientists whose papers I regularly cite. The meeting ended with a conference dinner at Old Trafford… the Theatre of Dreams!
(Posted 21 August 2014)
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Postdoc world
I really can’t believe that it’s been almost 6 months since I was “done ‘n’ dusted” with my PhD (the novelty at being able to tick the Dr box on forms still hasn't worn off J). After numerous options arose towards the end of 2013 – from job opportunities to sporting prospects – I chose to remain at Stellenbosch University to pursue postdoctoral research investigating oxygen limitation and thermal tolerance in insects.
I really can’t believe that it’s been almost 6 months since I was “done ‘n’ dusted” with my PhD (the novelty at being able to tick the Dr box on forms still hasn't worn off J). After numerous options arose towards the end of 2013 – from job opportunities to sporting prospects – I chose to remain at Stellenbosch University to pursue postdoctoral research investigating oxygen limitation and thermal tolerance in insects.
While writing up PhD work and starting post-doc experiments, I've ventured into the world of lecturing insect physiology sub-modules and facilitating a practical course. The lecturing has vastly extended my knowledge, while the practical reinforced my tendency to avoid running experiments on Drosophila.
On the papers front, a collaborative paper (Clusella-Trullas et al., 2014) on high temperature survival and HSP70 responses to temperature variation in two marine invertebrate species from Marion Island was recently published Antarctic Science; while another that investigated false coding moth diapause responses was accepted for publication in Journal of Applied Entomology (Terblanche et al., in press).
In my “spare” time, I've become addicted to SCUBA! J Diving in False Bay is incredibly beautiful but freezing cold (clearly my low temperature tolerance leaves a lot to be desired)! A highlight thus far has to be diving with seven gill cowsharks at Shark Alley! Check them out on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadnose_sevengill_shark
(Posted 19 April 2014)
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Done 'n' dusted
My thesis is DONE! J Joy! Celebration! Happy dance! I can’t help but think that all the other skills that I've learnt over the past 4-and-a-bit years are more valuable than learning to manhandle a 100-plus page word document. But I guess there’s no way to examine time, project or crisis (eek!!!) management strategies so a thesis will have to suffice. It’s funny how the instant that the work is polished and complete, the long hours, moments of despair and “why am I doing this” are swept under the carpet and all that’s left to do is to bask in the afterglow of post-thesising (provided I can ignore the pesky “so what are you going to do next year” questions)! J
My thesis is DONE! J Joy! Celebration! Happy dance! I can’t help but think that all the other skills that I've learnt over the past 4-and-a-bit years are more valuable than learning to manhandle a 100-plus page word document. But I guess there’s no way to examine time, project or crisis (eek!!!) management strategies so a thesis will have to suffice. It’s funny how the instant that the work is polished and complete, the long hours, moments of despair and “why am I doing this” are swept under the carpet and all that’s left to do is to bask in the afterglow of post-thesising (provided I can ignore the pesky “so what are you going to do next year” questions)! J
For those of you who wonder what my thesis entailed, here’s a word cloud from the abstract. The actual document will be embargoed until I've published the two remaining unpublished chapters…. watch this space!
So while the year draws to a close, I continue writing papers, running “side project” experiments, analyzing data, collaborating on other bits ‘n’ bobs and planning next year. In the end, nothing much has changed... I just don’t have a thesis hanging over my head and getting in the way of more interesting research!
On a side note, one of our recent papers investigating caterpillar aggregation (Schoombie et al., currently in press at Journal of Experimental Biology) was recently highlighted in Nature.
(Posted 14 October 2013)
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5 months into The Year of the Thesis (TYOTT)...
It’s already June (eek!) and crunch time in TYOTT! Lab work and data collection are now distant (read painful! J) memories and it’s down to the final analyses and writing up. After having stashed some of the data for almost 4 years, it’s fantastic to start putting the bigger picture together – fingers crossed that all the puzzle pieces are in the box!
It’s already June (eek!) and crunch time in TYOTT! Lab work and data collection are now distant (read painful! J) memories and it’s down to the final analyses and writing up. After having stashed some of the data for almost 4 years, it’s fantastic to start putting the bigger picture together – fingers crossed that all the puzzle pieces are in the box!
Recently, I have had two papers accepted for publication: one in the Journal of Insect Physiology and the other in Antarctic Science. The JIP one is a research chapter from my thesis (fist pump!) that investigated the physiological effects of fluctuating thermal and hydration regimes in my "PhD pet" (i.e. false codling moth larvae), while the other that investigated the heat shock responses in two marine invertebrates from Marion was in collaboration with Dr. Clusella-Trullas.
In addition to all the thesising, I’ve been playing copious amounts of hockey with Maties. We were recently crowned champions of the inaugural Varsity Sports Hockey tournament, with some of the games having been televised live on national TV!
Here’s hoping that my thesis will be a winner too! J
(Posted 4 June 2013)
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"Year of the Thesis"
1 January 2013 in the “Year of the Thesis” started off on an aeroplane, fast asleep, somewhere over Africa. After more than a day’s travel, I landed in sunny (not foggy – surprise surprise) San Francisco for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Annual Meeting. Wow! Once I’d grown accustomed to the sheer number of biologists present and subdued my crazed fan/”I’ve read ALL your papers”/OMW that’s THE Prof X response, the meeting was fantastic! The days were filled with loads of highly relevant research presentations and workshops, “networking” (i.e. excuse to socialise) and getting to know my awesome roommates (shout out: Sarah, Carly and Danielle J). I presented some of my PhD work on cross tolerance between modified atmosphere and low temperature stress during a session that was complementary to the symposium titled: Physiological Responses to Simultaneous Shifts in Multiple Environmental Stressors: Relevance in a Changing World. Special thanks to SICB, the NSF, and the Symposium organisers Anne Todgham and Jonathan Stillman, for helping to ease the horrendous Rand-USD exchange rate by granting me with student housing support and a travel award. After the conference there was time to play tourist-tourist and I made short work of Alcatraz, Fisherman’s Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge as well as the Muir Woods, Yosemite and Grand Canyon National Parks. I guess if science doesn’t work out, there’s always Vegas, baby! ;)
1 January 2013 in the “Year of the Thesis” started off on an aeroplane, fast asleep, somewhere over Africa. After more than a day’s travel, I landed in sunny (not foggy – surprise surprise) San Francisco for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Annual Meeting. Wow! Once I’d grown accustomed to the sheer number of biologists present and subdued my crazed fan/”I’ve read ALL your papers”/OMW that’s THE Prof X response, the meeting was fantastic! The days were filled with loads of highly relevant research presentations and workshops, “networking” (i.e. excuse to socialise) and getting to know my awesome roommates (shout out: Sarah, Carly and Danielle J). I presented some of my PhD work on cross tolerance between modified atmosphere and low temperature stress during a session that was complementary to the symposium titled: Physiological Responses to Simultaneous Shifts in Multiple Environmental Stressors: Relevance in a Changing World. Special thanks to SICB, the NSF, and the Symposium organisers Anne Todgham and Jonathan Stillman, for helping to ease the horrendous Rand-USD exchange rate by granting me with student housing support and a travel award. After the conference there was time to play tourist-tourist and I made short work of Alcatraz, Fisherman’s Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge as well as the Muir Woods, Yosemite and Grand Canyon National Parks. I guess if science doesn’t work out, there’s always Vegas, baby! ;)
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The end of (the world) 2012
In August, I attended the 7th Citrus Research International Symposium – a conference designed to give the citrus fruit industry direct access to the research they fund. I gave the audience an overview of my PhD work to date, and discussed the value of using mechanistic studies on citrus fruit pests to better understand their thermal physiology and improve current post-harvest cold sterilisation protocols. I left the meeting with a greater understanding of the cold chain process (“from farm to food”) and the economic importance of successful integrated pest management programs.
In August, I attended the 7th Citrus Research International Symposium – a conference designed to give the citrus fruit industry direct access to the research they fund. I gave the audience an overview of my PhD work to date, and discussed the value of using mechanistic studies on citrus fruit pests to better understand their thermal physiology and improve current post-harvest cold sterilisation protocols. I left the meeting with a greater understanding of the cold chain process (“from farm to food”) and the economic importance of successful integrated pest management programs.
Once the distraction of watching the London Olympics passed, 2012 flew by in a haze of data, analyses, write-ups, and all-important graphs! Like a run-away freight train, I seemed to gain momentum as the year progressed (perhaps inspired to finish projects before the “end of the world” J). After the holidays and my upcoming trip to San Francisco to attend the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Annual Meeting, my inner lab rat will return and it’ll be back to the grindstone (or should that be exercise wheel?). Provided that any unforeseen dilemmas stay hidden, this time… next year… I’ll be a PhD graduate!
(Posted 30 December 2012)
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The hills are alive, with the sound of science
My research visit to Denmark was followed by the annual Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) conference in Salzburg, Austria. Home to Mozart, The Sound of Music and Christian Doppler (discoverer of the Doppler Effect), one cannot ask for a more beautiful (or academic) location in which to absorb science and interact with researchers from the extensive world of experimental biology.
My research visit to Denmark was followed by the annual Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) conference in Salzburg, Austria. Home to Mozart, The Sound of Music and Christian Doppler (discoverer of the Doppler Effect), one cannot ask for a more beautiful (or academic) location in which to absorb science and interact with researchers from the extensive world of experimental biology.
At the conference, I presented recent results from two projects that form part of my PhD thesis: My oral presentation “Heat shock protein 70 response to low temperature and elevated carbon dioxide in the false codling moth, Thaumatotibia leucotreta” (L Boardman, JG Sørensen, TG Grout, JS Terblanche) gave the preliminary results of my research into the possible mechanisms of action whereby controlled atmosphere gas treatments affect low temperature tolerance. My poster entitled “Fluctuating thermal- and hydration regimes in a chill susceptible insect” (L Boardman, JG Sørensen, JS Terblanche) displayed the preliminary results of my research into whether the effects of controlled fluctuating thermal regimes and fluctuating hydration regimes are protective or accumulating damage at the cellular and whole-organism levels.
All abstracts for SEB presentations can be found online at: http://www.sebiology.org/meetings/Salzburg2012/programmes.html
So after the fun and games in Europe, it’s back to the grind in wintery Stellenbosch. It’s time to knuckle down, write-up results and then attack my remaining projects – no doubt music to my supervisors’ ears!
(Posted 24 July 2012)
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(Posted 24 July 2012)
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Research visit to Denmark
I am currently enjoying a research visit to Aarhus University (Department of Bioscience), Silkeborg, Denmark to conduct 2 months of research with my co-supervisor Jesper Sørensen. Special thanks to the Journal of Experimental Biology and Company of Biologists Travel Grant for partially funding the visit!
Who knew that lab work in a foreign language could be such an adventure! Day 1 involved translating a protocol into English (thank you Google translate and Afrikaans) but at least my Danish vocabulary now extends slightly beyond the words "beer", "cheers", and "thank you"! However, I think I'll leave the pronounciation lessons for another day...
After strategically planning my trip to enjoy a European Spring, I failed to factor in the (in)famous Danish rain! 1 week into my stay and I've seen the sun for a grand total of 1h! The forecast is promising a better weekend (and by better I mean "hotter" than 10 degrees and no rain!), so that should give me some time to get out the lab, explore the town and surrounding forests by bicycle (very European!), and hunt down a delicious Danish pastry (or two!).
(Posted 16 May 2012)
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Latest publication...
My latest paper entitled “Reactive oxygen species production and discontinuous gas exchange in insects” will be published in the upcoming issue of Proceedings B (click here to view the abstract and download a pdf copy).
Using a combination of real-time, flow through respirometry and live-cell fluorescence microscopy, we aimed to test a single key prediction of the oxidative damage hypothesis of discontinuous gas exchange cycles (DGC) using Samia cynthia pupae. However, our novel, exploratory method revealed a more complex interaction between oxygen levels, the spiracles (indicative of the insects’ gas exchange pattern) and the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS; free radicals) than originally anticipated. Our results were equivocal, but indicated a possible signalling role for ROS in DGC.
Click here to watch a short video of the change in ROS (seen as changes in the fluorescent intensity of the red CM-H2XRos (Invitrogen) probe) under different oxygen levels.
(Posted 26 January 2012)
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Welcome to my blog!
I am currently a PhD student at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, in Dr John Terblanche's Applied Physiological Ecology lab. After my upgrade from a MSc to PhD was approved at the end of 2011, Dr Jesper Sørensen (Aarhus University, Denmark) became my co-supervisor.
Briefly, my project involves integrating insect physiology with molecular biology techniques in order to gain further understanding into the mechanisms of insect low temperature tolerance under modified atmospheres. More details into my current research and publications can be found on my pages in this blog.
Outside the lab, you will find me on the Maties hockey field, running in the winelands, or sliding around an ice rink! I also love travelling to new countries, taking 1000s of photographs and then attempting to condense everything into 1 scrapbook!
(Posted 20 January 2012)
(Posted 20 January 2012)