Sabine Rannio is a second year doctoral student working with Jesper Sjöström. Sabine holds neuroscience degrees from the University of Bristol, UK (BSc), Georg-August University Göttingen, Germany (MSc), and Université de Bordeaux, France (MSc).
What about neuroscience and your research area excites you?
I love that neuroscience is very interdisciplinary and international and that there are so many exciting topics to explore and so many interesting people to work with. Synaptic plasticity (the change in connectivity between neurons over time) quickly became my favourite topic in my undergrad studies, as I find it fascinating that our brain is constantly changing and adapting. Synaptic plasticity shapes who we are and how our brain functions, can lead to pathologies such as psychiatric disorders, but may also be the key for therapeutic intervention for these pathologies. It is such a key concept and I think that by understanding synaptic plasticity, we will be able to understand the brain.
Describe your research and the implications of your project.
My research investigates the location-specific role of NMDA receptors in synaptic plasticity using in vitro electrophysiological approaches. I aim to determine the fundamental rules of synaptic plasticity, which will improve our understanding of brain development, learning and memory, but also pathologies such as autism, depression, and Alzheimer's Disease in order to develop more efficient therapeutic strategies.
What challenges do you find while working with your animal model in your research and how do you try to overcome them?
There are the obvious ethical considerations, for sure. For instance, sacrificing surplus mice when they could be used for experiments in another lab is very unfortunate and I hope that systems will be implemented soon that make it possible for these surplus animals to be used by other labs, meaning fewer animals would have to be bred for research purposes. Then there is the translation issue, i.e., to what extent do our findings apply to human brains? I work on the cellular level, so translation might be a little bit easier than, say, behavioural observations, but we still need more studies and meta-analyses to look into this in more detail.
In what way does working with your particular animal model benefit your research?
I work with transgenic animals to study synaptic plasticity and so, mice are the best model organism as we can introduce foreign genetic material into particular cell types or even delete certain genes. This allows us to study distinct cellular and molecular signalling pathways. Mice are also relatively well characterised in regards to electrophysiological properties of different neuronal cell types, which makes our work a bit easier.
What are some of your favourite activities outside the lab?
Photography, walking and hiking are my favourite activities outside the lab. Montreal is a great place for photo-walks, from the street art on Boulevard St. Laurent to the beautiful parks full of chunky squirrels and fluffy birds. I also have a furry, four-legged flatmate, so cuddle sessions are always great fun.
What is one important thing you have learned during the pandemic?
Science communication is key and something that every single one of us has to work on. It is easy to blame non-scientists or scientists outside your field for not understanding key concepts and instead following conspiracy theories or other misinformation. However, I think that we as scientists and in this case, we as biomedical scientists, have to spend more time and energy on developing effective communication strategies aimed at people outside of our field. It is important to realise that our responsibility as scientists goes beyond the lab.
