UCMI Building Internal Expertise Through Collaboration
Scientific progress is rarely the work of a single laboratory or research team. It depends on researchers sharing expertise, learning from one another and building the specialized skills needed to move their work forward.
That spirit of collaboration recently brought UCMI Insectary Manager Danspaid Mabuka and Ankush Auradkar, Assistant Project Scientist at UC San Diego, to Baltimore for a week of hands-on training in embryonic microinjection. The training was led by Dr. Yuemei Dong, Associate Scientist at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute, under the direct supervision of Dr. George Dimopoulos, Principal Investigator for the UCMI program and Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute.
During the training, fresh mosquito eggs were collected and carefully aligned under a microscope. Researchers then used specialized equipment to inject genetic constructs directly into the developing embryos before transferring the eggs to trays where they could hatch.
The process requires precision at every step. The eggs are extremely small, and following injection, researchers must successfully recover and hatch the embryos before they can determine whether the procedure worked.
During two practice sessions, 
Danspaid and Ankush worked with two different genetic constructs. Each included a fluorescent marker that researchers could look for after the eggs hatched, with one associated with green fluorescence and the other with red fluorescence.
After the injected eggs hatched, they screened the resulting larvae under specialized microscopy for these fluorescent signals. The markers provide a visible way to identify positive results among the mosquitoes that developed directly from the injected embryos.
The training took Danspaid and Ankush through the process from beginning to end: preparing and aligning mosquito eggs, performing the injections, transferring the embryos for hatching and screening the resulting larvae. Photographs from the training document each stage of that workflow.
The week at Johns Hopkins also shows how collaboration across UCMI can strengthen the program. Researchers from participating institutions bring different areas of expertise to the initiative, creating opportunities to share knowledge and build new skills across teams. For Danspaid and Ankush, that meant learning the microinjection process firsthand and bringing that experience back to their work in California.
That exchange of expertise can help strengthen the technical capabilities available within the UCMI program as its research continues to advance.