ECR Spotlight is a series of interviews with early-career authors from a selection of papers published in Journal of Experimental Biology and aims to promote not only the diversity of early-career researchers (ECRs) working in experimental biology but also the huge variety of animals and physiological systems that are essential for the ‘comparative’ approach. Haneal Pae is an author on ‘ Drosophila require both green and UV wavelengths for sun orientation but lack a time-compensated sun compass’, published in JEB. Haneal is a PhD student in the lab of Ysabel Giraldo at University of California, Riverside, USA, investigating how sensory information is integrated and processed in the nervous system and influences Drosophila orientation during flight.
Haneal Pae
How did you become interested in biology?
I remember becoming fascinated by the human eye when I was first learning about it in detail in middle school. I was amazed how something I used every day for granted had such intricate and complex mechanisms behind it. I started to wonder what other mechanisms were behind our everyday behaviors and chose to major in biotechnology for my undergraduate degree. Later, as I watched my grandmother, struggling with Alzheimer's, forget most things in a matter of minutes but remember other past events very clearly, I wondered how individual experiences differentially impact memory consolidation. Intrigued, I became interested in how one's lived experiences are stored in memory and how this affects future behaviors and decisions.
Describe your scientific journey and your current research focus.
Initially, I was interested in investigating Drosophila orientation during flight to understand how long flies remember their direction over time. Surprisingly, I found that flies behaved differently to a green LED stimulus when they had an additional rotational cue around the vertical axis, as they would change their heading if the LED position changed. As we conducted multiple behavioral tests to understand this new finding, we found out that flies required a dual green–UV stimulus to maintain their original heading during a stimulus position change. Currently, I am interested in understanding how different sensory inputs are integrated in the brain to influence flight behavior in Drosophila.
How would you explain the main findings of your paper to a member of the public?
Drosophila can cover great distances when flying by using the sun as a reference point for straight-line orientation, a behavior known as sun orientation. To study this behavior in a lab setting, previous orientation studies often used a green LED to simulate the sun. We found that in a lab setting, if the fly can rotate freely around its vertical axis, it maintains its original heading when the green light stimulus does not change position. This behavior was different from sun orientation as flies are expected to adjust their heading to maintain their original heading relative to the sun stimulus. As flies were not able to perform sun orientation with a single green LED, we added a UV light stimulus to better represent the spectral content of the sky. With the additional UV light stimulus, flies maintained their heading even during a position change. We also found that even with the paired green–UV stimulus, flies do not adjust their heading according to the hourly movement of the sun. In this study, we found that Drosophila require a dual green–UV stimulus to fully perform sun orientation and do not possess a time-compensated sun compass.
What is the hardest challenge you have faced in the course of your research and how did you overcome it?
When I first started research on fruit fly orientation, specifically how flies use the sun stimulus to pick a heading, the data I collected conflicted with findings from previous research studies. I was uncertain of the validity of this new finding as I wasn't sure if this was due to a mistake during the experiments or if this was unprecedented. I was mentally stuck, worrying about both possibilities and not knowing how to resolve either issue. Fortunately, I was able to get through the confusion by talking with professors, and other graduate students, finding similar papers, and conducting additional experiments. In addition to this, I think it is important to not just sit with the frustration but to try and keep a positive attitude that things will work out even though at the moment it doesn't seem like it.
What is the most important lesson that you have learned from your career so far?
I came to value the importance of taking breaks as I initially thought it was necessary to just keep going, especially when I had a deadline or wasn't making as much progress as I wanted. I didn't realize this at first, because I had always thought that you could plow through if you were determined enough but I slowly realized I would perform worse over time. I learned that sometimes it's better to force yourself to stop and take a break.
Haneal Pae's contact details: University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.
E-mail: [email protected]
