In Manhattan a tower is being renamed

[mr715]

11. Wow

I went to PS/IS 187, then taught at MS 324 (the IS 90 campus on 168th Street).

Fort Tryon was my stomping ground. I can give a pretty good tour of the Cloisters.

I am a neurogeneticist. I will be describing the role of serotonin in mosquitos with regard to their host-seeking/blood-feeding, mate seeking, and egg laying behaviors. Basically I am in the process of making a mutant mosquito that cannot produce serotonin, then I am going to catalog any aberrant behaviors it has. We've done this sort of thing in mice before and it produces highly aggressive, slightly dumb mice that bully other mice. I am expecting to see more "bold" mosquito behaviors, likely taking 2nd blood meals.

Typically, when a mosquito gets a full blood meal, you'd expect them to turn kinda shy and cowardly, because biting is the riskiest part of their behavior, especially when they are already equipped with all they need to make eggs. I suspect my serotonin mutants will more boldly bite because they have an overactive "aggression" circuit.

The science is ongoing*. I'm a teacher first and a scientist second. Soo... I can talk about this stuff all day.

*I am not very adept at the technical aspects of working under a microscope to inject mosquito eggs with nanoliter level volumes of chemicals.


Thanks for asking. I can talk more if you are interested.

MR

PS -- Oh and my mom and grandmom were school aids at PS 132, the Juan Pablo Duarte School