A giant congratulations to Max Hendershot for the publication of his undergraduate research in the WilsonToxLab! Max worked in the lab in summer after his 3rd year and did his 4th year thesis in the lab, before starting his MSc. Max’s research was with former PhD student Andrea Murillo Ramos and in collaboration with former PDF Andrew Thompson. Together, Andrea and Andrew designed a locomotory behavioural assay for our polychaete worms. Max’s project focused on extending this assay from adults into juveniles, which was needed if we were going to use this assay in the long run. Adult worms are large, so the original assay was in petri dishes, and our colony is really female biased, so trying to generate enough males to look at sex effects is super challenging. Instead, we moved the assay to juveniles in a plate based assay, which allows higher throughput.

Max’s project focused on trying to understand what neurochemical modulation could alter locomotion, using modulators of the dopamine, serotonin, GABA and acetylcholine pathways. This sets the stage for the lab to consider the impact of environmental contaminants that might alter these pathways. Check out his study “The marine worm Capitella teleta is sensitive to neurochemical manipulation, as revealed via a novel behavioural tool” in the Canadian Journal of Zoology. Its open access!