Rockies and High Plains Vector-borne Diseases Center Summer Internship

Hello everyone! My name is Alina, and I'm a senior at USU majoring in biochemistry. I have been working in Saarmaan's lab at USU for 2 years, primarily on insectary maintenance and some genetic testing.  Now that I'm a RaHP VEC intern, I'm going to the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District (SLCMAD) once a week to learn what they do, including surveillance field work. However, the main thing I'm working on with SLCMAD is attempting to develop a new diagnostic tool for Lysinibacillus sphaericus ( Lsph) resistance in  Culex Pipiens. ⍺-glucosidase is an important receptor in Lsph toxicity. Our hypothesis is that resistant Culex Pipiens have a lower ⍺-glucosidase activity than susceptible. We are using 4th instar larval samples and an ⍺-glucosidase activity assay kit to test this. So far, I have conducted 2 bioassays. I want to share in this post  what the bioassays look like: We grind the larva in PBS.  We prepare a master mix using the kit's reagents. We add ...

       The past two weeks, I have been working to help finish up the PCRs for the kdr mutations in Aedes aegypti from a thermal project that is being done in the Saavedra Lab, and with this project's work being wrapped up, my focus has switched over to the RaHP surveillance project.  This has meant a lot more mosquito identification work, which is more difficult now that there is not primarily Aedes Vexans in our overnight CO2 traps. We are finally starting to get a good amount of Culex Tarsalis in our traps, which is the primary focus of our surveillance, although we are also conducting bottle bioassays on Culex Pipiens simply because of the number of individuals we have been able to trap.     We have had mixed results from traps and sometimes will have up to 90% of the individuals in the trap being Tarsalis, and other times only a few individuals in the trap being Tarsalis, which has made conducting consistent bioassay trials with sufficient replicat...