Uploaded November 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Entered into the ZEISS Photography Competition 2018.
This is a fluorescence microscopy video of a crawling Drosophila larva, which has been genetically engineered to express red fluorescent protein (tdTomato) in its motor neurons.
The goal of Andy's research is to investigate action selection and learning by reverse-engineering neural circuits in the Drosophila (fruit fly) larvae. This reverse-engineering is done through a combination of different techniques, one of which is fluorescence microscopy. Andy said he chose to focus on the Drosophila larvae for a few reasons: "Larvae are semi-transparent and thus easier to image; larvae are easy to work with; they have been extensively researched and so there is a lot of genetic, anatomical, and behavioural data, and the final reason is that we do not yet understand how action selection or learning work in Drosophila," he said.
Entered into the ZEISS Photography Competition 2018.
This is a fluorescence microscopy video of a crawling Drosophila larva, which has been genetically engineered to express red fluorescent protein (tdTomato) in its motor neurons.
The goal of Andy's research is to investigate action selection and learning by reverse-engineering neural circuits in the Drosophila (fruit fly) larvae. This reverse-engineering is done through a combination of different techniques, one of which is fluorescence microscopy. Andy said he chose to focus on the Drosophila larvae for a few reasons: "Larvae are semi-transparent and thus easier to image; larvae are easy to work with; they have been extensively researched and so there is a lot of genetic, anatomical, and behavioural data, and the final reason is that we do not yet understand how action selection or learning work in Drosophila," he said.
