2022 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Investigating the role of individual dopaminergic reward neurons for locomotion
| Project/Area Number |
22K20673
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| Research Institution | Hokkaido University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2022-08-31 – 2024-03-31
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| Keywords | Locomotion / Dopamine / Drosophila / Parkinson |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The most important achievement is the publication of our novel behavioural tracking software that we are using. The manuscript has been accepted now and will be published within the next days. This publication includes the original experiments on which this project is based on and new experiments that were not finished at the time of the proposal. This also means that our novel software that we will used throughout the project is fully ready and all further behavioural analyses can be completed speedily.
We established the working setups and the basic experiments in our new lab in Sapporo. Also, we recruited an undergraduate and a Master student. All of these efforts took a bit longer than expected, but now we are ready for all planned experiments.
The Master student already started experiments testing for the molecular basis of the observed locomotion phenotypes. Towards this end, we decided to first employ a drug treatment to inhibit the production of dopamine, before investigating individual dopamine receptors. The first results look very promising.
Also, we started to check the first Parkinson's disease fly models for behavioural and anatomical phenotypes.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
Generally, we are a little behind the schedule for objective 1, but ahead for objectives 2 and 3.
Objective 1: It took longer than expected to establish setups and experiments in the new lab. But now everything is ready and a student will start the experiments soon.
Objective 2: Experiments started. By starting with pharmacological experiments, we were able to save a lot of time compared to the planned genetic manipulations, so we are ahead.
Objective 3: We started already and will hopefully soon be able to characterize both the behaviour and anatomy of the Parkinson's disease fly models. This was planned only for next year, so we are happy to be more advanced than planned.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
We will largely continue as originally planned.
Objective 1: the experiments will start soon, and all prerequisites for the analysis are now ready, so that these experiments are expected be finished as planned.
Objective 2: we slightly changed the plan and focus on pharmacological methods. These are quicker than the genetic tools available and will allow quicker process. Here, we concentrate first on confirming that the effects we see are indeed based on dopamine before analysing dopamine receptors.
Objective 3: the characterizations of the Parkinson's model flies follows the original plans.
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| Causes of Carryover |
As establishing the setups and experiments took longer than planned, we did not spend all money planned for the first fiscal year.
For next year, the Personnel costs will be used for staff that started on April 1st. The staff will work more hours than planned to use the left-over money from last year. We also plan to visit two conferences, one of them abroad. As travel costs abroad increased a lot in the last year, we will require more money than originally planned for travel.
We will buy new computers and components for another setup for faster experiments, and we will need money for the publication of the results towards the end of the year.
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