Senna Aldoubosh 0:13
Hi everyone, welcome to brains black holes and beyond a collaboration podcast between the Princeton Insights newsletter and the Daily Princetonian. From the Prince, my name is Senna Aldoubosh.
Oyshee Lahiry 0:22
And my name is Oyshee Lahiry.
SA 0:24
Today's guest on the show is Timothy Schwanitz, a second year graduate student in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department. He majored in English and Entomology with a minor in Plant Science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.He is now working in the McBride lab. His research interests lie primarily in insect neurobiology.
Cool. All right, so the first question is, as an undergraduate student, where did your academic interests lie? And how did you get involved in research? And what type of research were you involved in?
Timothy Schwanitz 0:55
Yeah, so I've been interested in insects for probably as long as I can remember. And for my undergraduate college search, I wanted to find somewhere where I could major in entomology, and there's only 12 schools in the country where you can do that. And there were only three that were close enough to home that I would go there. So it was a very quick college search.
And once I got into the field of Entomology, I took the opportunity to work with as many professors as I could, because it was a very small department that gave you that opportunity to work with a lot of different professors. And I really feel that I have benefited from that, because I got a broad exposure and doing all different kinds of research. And when I first started out, I actually didn't like molecular tools or techniques at all, because I was like, oh, no, like real research is being like out in shorts in the field and like hiking through swamps. And then I did that research, I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I thought I would. And then I \ did a research project that did involve a lot of molecular tools, and I realized that there was a lot of cool stuff you could do with them.
Oyshee Lahiry 1:59
Alright, so since you're currently working in the McBride lab, would you mind telling us about what type of research the McBride lab is involved in, and more specifically, what type of research you plan to conduct.
TS 2:10
So we study Aedes aegypti, the yellow fever mosquito, it's a globally invasive mosquito found throughout the tropics. And what's really cool about this mosquito is that pretty much all throughout its invasive range, it's more or less exclusively a human specialist. So if you and I are sitting in the same room with like a guinea pig, and a cow, or a goat, or whatever, another like mammal, it'll fly to us and bite us. And it won't bite the guinea pig or the other animal. This is in contrast to its native range, and Africa, where you have a broad spectrum of populations, that some of which are specialized on animals, and would prefer to bite the guinea pig. And then some of which are still specialized on humans and would prefer to bite the human. And so that makes it a really interesting study system to try and figure out how is this mosquito able to identify human beings as distinct from other animals? And how does it really like smell us? And it's specialized on us because it's, it's largely the odor of the odor of humans that it's queuing in on? And so we're really interested in that question. I mean, obviously, it's a major disease vector. And the reason it's such a good disease vector is because it likes to bite human to human to human rather than human to animal to some other animal.
So we're broadly interested in different aspects of how is it identifying human beings as distinct from other animals, how's this mosquito finding us? I personally am really interested in the neuro– sort of the neuro side of that. And there's this region in the brain called the antennal lobe. And that's where all of the sort of olfactory sensory neurons that are on the antennae and that actually detect the odor. So the very neurons that react to individual odors, will all go from the antennae to this region in the brain. And they all kind of like glom onto each other in very specific spots called glomeruli. I don't actually know what the etymology of glomerulus is, it's definitely not that they glom onto each other, but that's how I think of it. And I'm interested in those specifically glomeruli. So like the sub regions of the olfactory processing region that then lead to human specialization. So what's going on in that very particular region?
SA 4:13
That sounds really interesting. Are there any current works or projects that you're currently working on? And what draws your interests in that topic?
TS 4:21
Yeah, so I guess one of the sort of just going on with that is that the antennal lobe is made up of glomeruli, in the case of Aedes aegypti a little bit more than 60. But let's just say 60. And those glomeruli are sort of the first region where olfactory information is being processed. So the mosquitos smell something and some pattern activity and that glomeruli tells the mosquito what it's smelling. And at the moment we don't really know for most of those glomeruli what odorant receptor proteins are expressed on the olfactory sensory neurons that then lead to that glomerulus and that allow the mosquito to smell something. We don't really know what the olfactory receptor genes that code for those proteins are.
And so that's like sort of like a big, if you don't know the inputs to a system, it's obviously very difficult to understand the outputs of the system. And so I'm really interested in getting at more of those inputs and developing a molecular Atlas of the internal load, where we'll be able to say, this particular glomerulus responds to these odors, and it expresses this gene and that gene is important in these ways. And then once we have that Molecular Atlas, we'll be able to then sort of mess with the system and like silence, individual glomeruli, individual types of olfactory sensory neurons, and really sort of sort of like, follow up on how exactly they're influencing behavior.
SA 5:46
I guess like, if you're able to pinpoint how they're influencing, like, how those neurons are influencing the behavior, could you then use that knowledge to help with, you know, people who get yellow fever from these mosquitoes and insects?
TS 5:58
Yeah, so that is a big like down the road application for this type of work. So I want to stress that this is like really basic research of just trying to understand how, how sort of the mind of the mosquito works. But obviously, if you know what compounds the mosquito is using to hone in on human beings, if you know those compounds that it's using to hone in on us. And once you really understand what specifically it reacts to, and how its sense of smell works, it's much easier to sort of mess with that. So the best insect repellent we have at the moment, one of the top ones, is Deet. Deet was discovered by a random chemical screen conducted by the US military, it took like five years, they screened like 1000s of chemicals. They just put stuff on people's arms, and they're like, does this make you itch? Like no reaction? Okay, it does stop mosquitoes from biting you. Hugely labor intensive process. And definitely not the little I mean, it sort of worked, right. But it costs a ton of money, it costs a ton of time. And it seems much more elegant to be like, well, this is how the mosquito smelling us in the first place. And once we understand really how the olfactory system works, it makes more sense to sort of jam at them in a more targeted way, rather than just like, let's just put stuff on people's arms and see what works.
OL 7:11
No, that definitely sounds interesting. So one of our final questions is, well, STEM can be very frightening for many students, especially when they're starting out. Do you have any advice to students who are interested in STEM and research but either don't know how to get involved, or fear that they don't have enough research experience in their topic of interest?
TS 7:32
Well, I would definitely say like so when I so right now I'm in an ecology department. And I'm in a joint degree program of the neuroscience department. And in my undergrad, I got minimal ecology exploit exposure and minimal neuroscience exposure. And I would really stress that the nice thing about being a student is that you're explicitly there to learn. So if you're trying to pitch yourself to get into someone's lab whose work you really think is cool, make it clear that you're really passionate and interested in it. Because that's, that's sort of the bedrock of all of this stuff. STEM can be very frustrating as anybody who works in, in these fields knows. So that passion is sort of key. And if you've got that, then you're already halfway there. And then if you're trying to get into a lab, definitely pitch yourself as I really want to learn these things. Like I don't actually understand them yet. But I really, really want to know. And I think, at least in my case, professors have always responded well to that. And I don't think I've ever met someone who went to a professor and said, Oh, I really, really want to learn about the system I really want to work in and the professor said, Well, you just don't know enough. So can't be you can't come in. And if that happens, probably not allowed. You want to be in any way. So pitch your weaknesses as sort of strengths, because it's an opportunity to grow and learn.And there's, if you already knew it all, you would be the professor. So the whole point of being a student is learning these things. So definitely pitch it in that light.
SA 9:00
Awesome. And then is there anything else you wanted to mention on the podcast that maybe we forgot to ask or just in general, anything that you wanted to bring up?
TS 9:09
Bugs are really cool. There's a lot of neat study work you can do. If anybody is interested in insects, or just casually learning about them going on insect collecting trips. We actually just got a graduate student entomology club started–The Princeton entomology group. We will be advertising sooner rather than later. But definitely feel free to look for us on the student graduate student website, where all the clubs are listed. And we'll be hosting events–doing like movie screenings, that type of stuff. And we're just really interested in having fun with bugs. So yeah.
SA 9:45
Well, thank you so much, Tim, for being on the show. It was really awesome learning about, you know, things that you're interested in and what you're planning on what you plan on researching. But yeah, thank you so much.
OL 9:54
This episode of B cube was hosted by Senna Aldoubosh and Oyshee Lahiry, sound engineered by Oyshee Lahiry and produced under the 147th Managing Board of the Prince. To learn more about the McBride lab, visit the links in the description below. From the Prince. My name is Oyshee Lahiry and have a great rest of your day.