30 April 2025
Dr Roossien's work is focused on how developmental abnormalities in the serotonin system lead to disordered behavioural functions, including mood, appetite, sleep and cognition.
His lab has been utilising the Zantiks MWP for their undergraduate methods in genetics module to teach skills in behavioural analysis of mutant Drosophila, including larval locomotion, larval phototaxis, and adult startle response. The Zantiks MWP's use in the module facilitates practical experience in coding animal behaviours from video data, which is essential for accurately analysing behavioural patterns. It also offers the opportunity to work with large datasets generated automatically, fostering skills in data management and analysis. Finally, it helps emphasise for students the importance of generating baseline data on animal behaviours, in order to make meaningful comparisons and interpret the effects of experimental manipulations.
Now that the MWP is up and running for us, I'm very excited about what it can do for both our lab's research and our students! It's great that I can use the same system for both my teaching and my individual research. With all its capabilities, I have many more ideas I am going to incorporate in future iterations of the course.
If you'd like to learn more about how using a Zantiks systems can enable undergraduate and graduate research projects, please contact us!
Find out more about Dr Douglas Roossien
