McFadden Lab- The Accidental Parasitologists

We have a new gorgeous bug 🐜 🐛 🕷 🦋 habitat created in one of the doors in our building 😍😍. Hats off to the creativity of our resident gardeners..

Today we highlight Sarah Farrell who is undertaking her Honours with us this year. She is our resident artist where you would have seen some of her beautiful drawings last year on our FB page. She helps out in the insectary and as with all our students has the making of an awesome scientist and thinker.

We asked her a few questions about herself and she was kind enough to supply them!

What subjects did you do at undergrad?

I started out very broad in my first year doing biology, chemistry and math subjects. By third year I had narrowed down my interests to microbiology, immunology and animal sciences and ended up majoring in animal health and disease biotechnology. I also chose to take practical subjects like the Science and Technology Internship (SCIE30002) and Biomedical Science Research Project (BIOM30003). For my internship I chose to work in a water testing facility as a lab technician and in my research project I got to work on investigating a trend of increasing penicillin resistance in Staphylococcus aureus. I found these two subjects really helped me to decide that the research side of science was the best for me.

What interested you in joining our lab to do your honours?

When I was contemplating doing an honours year I was very interested in working with animals in a laboratory setting. I had heard about the McFadden lab and was lucky enough to be able to organise a tour with Hayley around the laboratory. I was excited at the prospect of being able to work with mice and mosquitoes and the friendly and welcoming atmosphere of the lab really sealed the deal.

What do you love doing outside of the lab?

I love spending time with my dog and going out on hikes with my family. I also really enjoy painting and spending hours looking at other peoples paintings!

What do you see yourself doing after Honours / or what are you looking for in your Honours (ie what would you like to learn in terms of skills)?

I'm hoping to get more experience in a wide range of laboratory procedures and to improve my scientific communication skills. I'm interested in either becoming a research assistant or doing a PhD after honours. I'm also very interested in the idea of doing scientific illustration commissions for people to publish in their scientific literature. We'll see!

Post Easter results! Yayy! its been a while since we posted as we get everyone in gear again in the lab.

Dean cracking the code for this experiment with infecting the mosquitoes with human malaria. Its a tricky process that is laborious and hard to get right. This time it worked beautifully.

In figure #1 The dark pink circles are the cysts we call oocysts that the parasite forms on the outside of the mosquito gut. This is the control and the infection is great, giving us a good number of oocysts allowing us count and ensure statistically we are confident if we see any reduction in numbers.

In figure #2 Treating the parasite with a drug then feeding these treated parasites to the mosquito results in no oocyst formation. This shows us the drug could be used to reduce transmission of the parasite in the mosquito.

Today we spotlight Grace who is starting Honours in our lab. We will hear from her about her project at some stage but here are some questions we asked her and she kindly provided the answers!

What subjects did you do at undergrad?

I majored in biochemistry and molecular biology so naturally I did a lot of bcmb subjects. I am also really interested in genetics and was able to complete a number of subjects, including the 3rd year subject Human and Medical Genetics which I really enjoyed.

What interested you in joining our lab to do your honours?

I was looking for an established lab that I would be able to learn new laboratory skills from, and the description of this lab really stood out. After speaking with Geoff and Dean and learning some culturing skills from Vanessa, it really confirmed that they are great mentors and I have lots to learn! It is also really cool to have mouse models and an insectary all within the McFadden lab.

What do you love doing outside of the lab

Outside of the lab I love to play marimba, it is a nice relaxing change from the busyness of university life. I also love to go swimming and ice skating to stay fit, and would love to go travelling again when restrictions ease.

What do you see yourself doing after Honours / or what are you looking for in your Honours (ie what would you like to learn in terms of skills)

I am not sure what I want to do yet, which is why I am doing an Honours to gain more research and communication skills. I have been working at a clinical trials clinic so that might be a field I go into as well.

Happy NewYear everyone! its been a while since we posted. We're all getting back in the lab, various experiments are happening and training for malaria culturing is in full swing 🙂

To all our friends and supporters of this page and our lab, thanks for following us and supporting us during the last 12 months. Its meant a lot and here’s to a great Christmas break and to 2021 with a full lab getting science done! 👊

Nothing like having a lab Christmas celebration coupled with Ton our insect manager dude getting his 25 years of service medal 👊👊

A little giggle for all our science friends.. Its been a big month getting everyone back in the lab on shifts, grateful for summer and grateful for smiles!

Its been a long haul since the end of March 2020 that our lab activities have been curtailed due to the severe Melbourne lockdown. However, all our efforts have now seen a 11 consecutive days of zero cases from over 400-600 a day in August.

A big tribute to the people of Melbourne for this fabulous outcome. Most importantly we would like to acknowledge each of our lab members who either had their studies disrupted and/or major research activities stopped, for weathering the storm with strength and resilience. This was all done with a sense of what was best for the community and we could never be prouder of them. Our science is still very much reduced as we move towards a "COVID normal" and hopefully we can all work together normally again as a lab in the new year.

We have Vanessa being featured in the article this week!

Vanessa Mollard: Humans of BioSciences Vanessa Mollard: Humans of BioSciences

Our resident science artist is now developing graphical abstracts for some our past publications. This is all hand drawn with water colours excepting for the electron micrograph.

We're proud to present the first one which is the paper that Geoff McFadden published in Nature that was seminal in our lab starting to work with the malaria parasite.

McFadden, G.I., Reith, M.E., Munholland, J., and Lang-Unnasch, N., (1996) Plastid in human parasites. Nature. 381: 482.

The link to download the paper is below if you wish to read it (its very short) after you've digested the graphical abstract! Tell us what you think!

https://unimelbcloud-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/vpas_unimelb_edu_au/EbjFtQwxo2JPi19Q5as2HskBRypveKpyM7hqF_L5-0C9fg?e=rIfIVD