Description
Material provided: Personalized training for end-users
Unit definition: 1 week of access
Biosafety Level: CL2
Location: Charles University (CUNI), Prague, Czech Republic
Installation name: Insectary of the Laboratory for vector biology
Website: CUNI
Description of the facility
The Laboratory for Vector Biology is a leading research team in the field of sand fly biology. It is located in the Department of Parasitology at the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague. It provides fully-equipped secure CL2 insectary and laboratories suitable to study sand fly vectorial competence, Leishmania infection, development and interaction with the host and the vector, behavioral assays and species identification approaches.
The Insectary serves as a sand fly stock collection. At present, eleven species are maintained, including several suspected and proven vectors of Leishmania infantum, Le. donovani, Le. tropica and Le. major. For some species (P. sergenti, S. schwetzi), several colonies adapted to different hosts or insect pathogens are held. The insectary thus hosts the largest collection of sand fly colonies in the World.
The Insectary is composed by 5 rooms and 4 boxes, the installation has 85 square meters.
Room 1 (6 m2): for preparation of sand fly larval food, equipped with two large hoods for fermentation and a freezer for storage of fermented food.
Room 2 (15 m2): multifunctional room equipped with freezers and fridges for storage and handling of other material necessary for sand fly breeding.
Room 3 (10 m2): for handling sand fly colonies, equipped with two stereomicroscopes and incubator, attached to two rearing boxes (3,5 m2 each) with controlled temperature, humidity and photoperiod.
Room 4 (10 m2): for handling of sand fly colonies, equipped with two stereomicroscopes and incubator, attached to one rearing box (4,5 m2) with controlled temperature, humidity and photoperiod. Rooms 3 and 4 are suitable for performance of behavioral assays.
Room 5 (12 m2): designed for sand fly infections, evaluated as CL2, equipped with sterile box, two incubators, two stereomicroscopes, UV microscope. Connected with a separate box suitable for transmission experiments with all Leishmania species.
Available vectors
Experiments may be conducted with the following INFRAVEC2-distributed sand fly vector colonies: Lutzomyia longipalpis, L. migonei, Phlebotomus arabicus, P. argentipes, P. duboscqi, P. orientalis, P. papatasi, P. perniciosus, P. sergenti, P. tobbi and Sergentomyia schwetzi.
Course overview
1 Unit is a 1-week access to receive sand fly colony establishment and maintenance training.
We offer Personalized Training to establish and maintain sand fly colonies (mass rearing of sand flies, larval diet production etc.).
Trainees will use the following equipment:
- Optical microscope with digital colour-camera (DM2000 LED, Leica)
- Biological Safety cabinet for blood stage cultures (HeraSafe, Thermo Fisher)
For more information, please contact us.