Optogenetic Stimulation and Humidity Logging for Sleep

Research

Devin Cornell, Kyle Gassel, Catherine Kinchen

Advisors: Dr. Mihail Cutitaru, Dr. Matthew Thimgan

Presentation Outline● Customer and Project Motivation● Humidity Logging Project● Light Stimulation Project● Live Demo● Q & A

Customer● Dr. Matthew Thimgan

○ Sleep research

■ Fly food supply affected

by low humidity

■ Current light flashing

setup is inaccurate and

uneven

Motivation● Optogenetics is used to study

the genetic nature of sleep

● Light stimulation induces

sleep in flies

● Determine if lifespan is

increased by more sleep

● The research requires a

controlled environment for

growing Drosophila flies

Value Proposition● Light Stimulation Project

○ Solution that can be used for future optogenetics research

○ Solution could be shared with other researchers in the field

● Humidity Project

○ Will give customer confidence that incubation is ideal for fly

development

○ Humidity information could be shared with other researchers to

provide value to the field

Overview - Humidity Logging● Measuring humidity inside

fly incubation test tubes to

help ensure their survival

Hardware Setup● Arduino Uno

● DHT22 Humidity Sensors using

custom digital protocol

● Sunfounder SD card reader

● DS3231 RTC

● Custom pull-up board

Physical Design● Sensors housed in 3D printed

environment

● Inserted directly into fly

incubation tubes

● Removable cap

Output Log● Samples every 0.5

second

● 6 humidity and

temperature sensors

● Stored in text file, opens

properly formatted in

Excel

● Outputs over serial for

debugging

Overview - Light Stimulation● Flashing LED’s at flies

and monitoring their

sleep patterns

● Trikinetics- popular

optogenetics

technology

Hardware Setup● 8 very bright LEDs

● Flashing at ~10Hz

● NMOS switch controlled

by npn on output of

RasPi

● Potentiometer to adjust

brightness

● Spacing for heat

dissipation

● Array draws ~17W

Software Architecture● Raspberry Pi with web server

controls light flashing

● Existing computer controls

RPi via web interface

● External hardware needed to

control LED power level

Live Demo

Q&A

Concordiam Design Group

References[1] Inagaki HK, Jung Y, Hoopfer ED, et al. Optogenetic control of Drosophila using a

red-shifted channelrhodopsin reveals experience-dependent influences on courtship.

Nat Methods. 2014;11(3):325-32.

[2]http://ar.neuro.fchampalimaud.org/