Observe, Dissect, Repeat - Week 2
They say practice makes perfect, and that patience is key. As corny as the adages are, I believe that when it comes to dissecting microscopic flies, that is the case. Although the confocal microscope which is used to visualize the quality of my dissections vis-à-vis fluorescence and tissue integrity has been either malfunctioning or occupied when my supervisor and I tried to use it for the whole week, I have faith that my skills are indeed improving.
The main achievement has been the identification of the late fourth instar larvae (L4) and recording not one but four videos of the late L4 turning into a pupa.
Figure 1: Anopheles sp. late fourth instar that evoked awe in a fellow Laidlaw scholar, Grace Stephens-Spada.
As I was meticulously taking pictures of all of the observed morphologies of the L4s, I thought about the day when I would be by a pond with my friends where one of them randomly says, "I won't be able to go on with my day unless you find me a mosquito larva that is about to turn into a pupa AND a pupa that has just hatched." Ah yes, then I will proudly stroll down to the water's edge and show them what I learned in the summer of '25. No really, my family has a good laugh about my struggles in the lab.
Looking back at my week, I am happy with how far I have come, considering I was so disappointed and overwhelmed on Monday with how much there was to accomplish and to hope for in my dissections. The friendly faces I see on a daily basis in the lab have become more familiar, the routine more efficient, and the process of investigation more pleasant. The independence I have in deciding what matter to devote my time to has been liberating and I am enjoying learning more about what kind of researcher I am and how I like to do my research. I have found out that once I am out of the lab, in order to be fully productive the next morning, I need to not spend more than a half an hour reflecting on the events of the day. I also need to have occasional tea breaks in-between my protocols and have good music playing in the background when I am carrying out something familiar (whereas for the unfamiliar I prefer to be in complete silence).
Apart from having dinner every evening with my flatmates where we laugh about our successes and failures of the day, we had a movie marathon on Friday, a karaoke night on Saturday, and the celebration of a fellow Laidlaw Scholar’s birthday at a beloved pub on Sunday.
Overall, I have had the chance to perfect my technique, try out the DAPI stain, and experiment with the protocol to adjust the exposure durations. I think that by now I have more or less have fine-tuned the methodology to allow for good staining and a preservation of the tissue integrity.
My goals for next week include dissecting fungus gnat larvae and pupae, collecting new mosquitoes from the University of Edinburgh, and working on selecting mosquito pupae and larvae that are temporally close to one another relative to their developmental stage.
Hello hello! I am an incoming third-year student at the University of St Andrews pursuing a degree in biology. Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, I moved to Italy in 2013 and have been living there ever since. Growing up in the birthplace of the Renaissance, I wanted to pursue higher education in a place with historical significance and somewhere where I could take walks in nature between classes; hence my choice of the University of St Andrews that is situated on the beautiful Scottish coastline. Over the course of my academic journey I have had the chance to explore numerous areas in biology, ranging from evolution to bacteriophage discovery to cell systems, out of which epigenetics and gene regulation during development have piqued my interest.
My primary research interest is developmental biology, which arose from my fascination with how multicellular organisms originate from a single cell. Therefore, my research focus for the first summer of the Laidlaw Scholars programme was the investigation of abdominal metamorphosis in Dipteran insects. To do so, I used fixation and Hoechst staining in addition to microscopy to study cell movement during several developmental stages in 2 species of flies. As for my leadership in action (LiA) project, I would like to make a meaningful contribution to an ongoing project related to wildlife conservation.
If I am not in lectures or studying in the library, I can be found working on a short story, watching films (and logging them on Letterboxd), reading old science fiction, or on a hike capturing the nature around me through photography. Having grown up in a multicultural setting, I enjoy learning more about the different cultures that exist on our planet, whether it is through cuisine, music, travelling, or linguistics. The latter partially explains my grasp of nearly five languages, though I have to warn you that my fluency differs dramatically. Otherwise, I also love spending time with animals, playing board games, or just talking.
More than anything, I am always happy to meet like-minded individuals who are curious about the world. Thus, please feel free to reach out or connect with me on LinkedIn! I would particularly appreciate the input of any scholar who is interested (or has experience) in similar potential LiA areas.
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