Former Molecular Biology and Biochemistry honors student Stephen Ratner is the lead author of a recent paper from the Barber Lab published in Current Protocols (https://doi.org/10.1002/cpz1.996). The Barber lab started in January 2020, and after pandemic delays Stephen joined as a sophomore in the fall of 2020. Stephen says, “I initially wanted to join the lab, because of the Barber Lab’s use of creative behavioral assays to investigate neural circuitry. As a member of the traumatic brain injury (TBI) team, I was able to explore these initial interests and develop new ones. Working in TBI has felt like exploring a new frontier of knowledge with a crew of amazing fellow undergrads graduate-students and incredibly supportive doctoral mentors. I will miss everyone in the Barber lab and at Waksman as I continue my career.” Stephen worked with principal investigator Annika Barber and staff scientist Michael Fetchko to identify methods for administering traumatic brain injury to fruit flies.
Why give a fly a head injury? Almost two million people sustain a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the United States every year. TBI is a contributing factor to one-third of all injury-related deaths, and more than 40% of survivors suffer long-term impairments, including sleep and circadian rhythm disorders. The Barber Lab’s focus is on understanding the neurobiology of sleep and circadian rhythms using fruit flies which offer a model system to understand the genetics and cell biology of how injury affects brain function and ultimately sleep.
Stephen spent his first year in the lab optimizing an injury method that used a shaker to administer whole-body trauma to flies, and tested expression of circadian clock genes in fly heads. These findings were confounded by the variability of the injury, and the lab decided to pilot another more calibrated injury method. This method, now published in Current Protocols, uses a piezoelectric plate to deliver a highly calibrated, tunable compression to the heads of tethered fruit flies. However, building the device took years of optimization and testing and required Stephen to self-teach electrical engineering as he redesigned circuits to allow reproducible, calibrated injury. After graduating with honors in 2022, Stephen stayed on in the Barber Lab as a technician to continue to develop the method and assisted in training additional undergraduates who have joined the project. Stephen took the lead in writing a detailed protocol that will allow other labs to build a fruit fly traumatic brain injury device, expanding the opportunities for other labs to use flies as a model for various aspects of post-injury pathology.
Using the new head injury device, the lab has been able to observe chronic changes in sleep and circadian behavior after injury and recently received a $400K grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate neuronal and glial genes that contribute to sleep disorders after traumatic brain injury in a fruit fly model. “Stephen was my first student here at Rutgers, and I truly can’t imagine starting the lab without him,” says principal investigator Annika Barber.
Stephen was recently admitted to the MD/PhD program at Georgetown University, where he is excited to continue to incorporate lab research with clinical training.
