Description
Material provided: Physical access 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: www.natur.cuni.cz
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 sandfly 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 sandfly 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 sandfly breeding.
Room 3 (10 m2): for handling sandfly 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 sandfly 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 sandfly 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 sandfly 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. sand fly
Services offered
1 Unit is a 1-week access to a dedicated CL2 lab to undertake infections on phlebotomine sandfly colonies, or perform behavioral studies.
The unit of access offers the rearing of the sandflies necessary for the experiments prior to the arrival of the user and preparation or infective Leishmania. Experimental infection and subsequent analysis will be realized by the user with help and supervision of a researcher for completion of the assays when necessary.
Possible experiments
Experiments in the insectary may include the following assays:
- Studies on vectorial competence of various sandfly species, molecular aspects of Leishmania development in sand flies.
- Studies on Leishmania transmission by sandflies, characterization of sandfly saliva and immune response of bitten hosts.
- Studies on sand fly behavior and new approaches towards molecular taxonomy of sand flies (MALDI-TOF fingerprinting, DNA-based species-specific markers etc.).
CL2 confined space is equipped with:
- Rearing boxes and incubators for infected and uninfected sandflies with controlled standard conditions (temperature, relative humidity and light/dark photoperiod).
- Animal room suitable for housing small animals (mice, hamsters, rabbits) that ensures proper animal care and welfare principles.
- Room equipped for sand fly larval diet preparation.
- Cryobank with Leishmania stock cultures.
- Incubator for Leishmania cultivation.
- Incubator for macrophages cultivation.
- Water bath with external circulation for artificial infection.
- Cooled centrifuge for eppendorf tubes and for 50 ml tubes.
- Stereomicroscope with 10×2 magnification and upper lightning.
- Inverted fluorescent microscope.
- -80-degree freezer
- -20-degree freezer and refrigerators
For more information, please contact us.