PI Meuti started this month by giving the plenary talk (think a sciencey-keynote address) to kick off this year’s Insect Biotech Conference at Niagara on the Lake in Ontario, Canada (June 6-8th). While there PI Meuti met several top-notch Canadian insect physiologists and got to sample some delicious ice wine!

Then, to celebrate her 33rd birthday, Megan gave her TED-style Discovery Talk at the Center of Science and Industry (COSI) for their monthly “COSI After Dark” event. The theme for this month was on “Dangerous Science,” so Megan highlighted how mosquitoes are the world’s most dangerous animals, killing over 850,000 people in 2015 alone. Megan also described how the pesticides that we are using are also dangerous for ecosystems and her lab’s work to uncover aspects of mosquito seasonal biology so that we may one day develop mosquito-specific strategies to control these dangerous and deadly disease vectors.

Above is a picture of an overwintering mosquito’s head taken with a super-cool USB microscope that the COSI folks allowed the Meuti Lab to borrow.

We recently discovered that we were one of two proposals selected for a SEEDS Grant from Ohio State’s Infectious Disease Institute!

This $24,985 grant will be used to purchase materials and to allow PI Meuti to receive invaluable training on CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology. Together these resources and training will allow us to submit more competitive and compelling grant proposals to the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. The ultimate goal of these grants will be to determine how the circadian clock regulates the hormonal and signalling pathways that generate seasonal responses in insects.