Rockies and High Plains Vector-borne Diseases Center Summer Internship

 Hi again! In this post, I want to talk about my experiences with egg collection during the summer. Thad, who you may know from the blog, collects wild egg rafts every week for his project, and I went with him once. He set up the "stinky water" (alfalfa water) traps the day before, and we went to the locations to collect them. Here is what they looked like: We looked for egg rafts, picked them up with a spoon, and put each in a separate container with water: When they hatch, having only one egg raft per container makes species identification easier. I used what I learned to collect mosquitoes from Logan, UT, and test them for resistance to LSPH. Alfalfa water that I fermented in my backyard One of the traps I set I got 13 egg rafts in Logan but forgot to take a picture. It was good to get more experience with field work.  

 Hi everyone! A few weeks ago, I went to SLCMAD and learned how to conduct virus testing in mosquitoes. They test for West Nile Virus and Saint Louis encephalitis using a qPCR method called TaqMan, which only measures the amplification of a specific sequence. Here's a picture of me learning how to use their very fancy multichannel micropipettes:  They also have an automated purification system to conduct the DNA extractions: They use 2 separate hoods to avoid contamination:  We only tested a few samples and none of them were positive for either virus. It was a very interesting experience and I got to use some equipment for the first time. 

Hi everyone! Today I want to talk about a bioassay I conducted to determine if one of our colonies was still resistant to Lsph. First, I  prepared a 10,000 ppm  Lsph  stock, then made  serial dilutions to create concentrations of 1,000, 100, 10, and 1 ppm. Then I used these stocks to create cups of concentrations 0.005, 0.05, 0.5, 5, 50, and 500 ppm. I made 3 replicates of each concentration. In each cup, I placed 25 2nd-instar larvae and added some food. This is what the cups look like; the one on the left is the control (no Lsph ), and the one on the right is the highest concentration: This is what the setup looks like: I checked the cups every 12 hours, counted the survivors, and collected the dead larvae in ethanol. At 48 hours, I ended the experiment and also collected the survivors in ethanol. After analyzing the obtained data, we concluded the colony was still highly resistant to Lsph. The resistant and susceptible samples in ethanol were stored in a -80 °C fr...

 Two weeks ago at SLCMAD, I learned how to collect their CO2 traps. I did a route called "inland sea." This route has 15 locations and combines rural and urban areas. This is what the traps look like: They also have a box that contains the CO2 tank and battery: This is me dismantling a trap: After collecting their traps, they count their mosquitoes and ID them, so I had the chance to get some practice with  mosquito IDing: It was good to get some surveillance experience. I had fun doing the route, and even though IDing is hard for me, it was interesting.  

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 ...