When I started college, I had a lot of expectations. I figured I would find a research lab to work in, and I even planned on taking a trip abroad to expand my research experience. I never expected however, that I would someday find myself plodding through a Czech forest looking for wild ticks. "Tick hunting," as we called this peculiar pastime, was an integral part of my summer, and I'm quite pleased by how my initial college goals led me down such an interesting path.

I spent my summer in Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Republic, doing research at the Institute of Parasitology. Michelle Brandon, a UA undergrad, and I worked in Dr. Libor Grubhoffer's Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Vector and Pathogens. Ceske Budejovice is a beautiful suburban town a few hours south of Prague. The city center, which was only a twenty-minute walk from the school, is built around a gigantic town square, claimed to be the biggest in all of Europe. A twenty-minute walk from the school in the other direction led to a small forest, conveniently located and well suited for the tick hunting I mentioned above.

We were a little over zealous our first day and arrived an hour before anyone else showed up. We used the time to try our luck at ordering coffee from the cafe in the lobby, a skill that slowly improved over the course of the summer. Before we got a chance to meet everyone, Libor insisted that we go to a clinic to get our first tick encephalitis vaccination. It wasn't exactly a warm welcome, but it reminded us of the importance of vector research in a country endemic to tick borne diseases.

Michelle and I worked on separate projects, but both studied the hard tick Ixodes ricinus. My original project aimed at studying molecules that stimulate feeding in ticks such as ATP and glutathione. However, to do this I needed to first construct an artificial feeding system to carry out my experiments. Artificial feeding in hard ticks is complicated by their long attachment time, and it has been a source of frustration for tick researchers for decades. Recently, Dr. Patrick Guerin in Switzerland has devised a working artificial feeding device using a reinforced silicone membrane with innovative attachment stimuli.

I thought I could use a similar system in the Czech Republic, but I soon learned that a protocol that took Guerin's lab over ten years to develop might not be easily implemented in three months. Regardless of the final outcome, I got to try my hand at some very interesting experiments. For instance, one of the attachment stimuli I used for the feeder was a lipid extract derived from cow hair. This sent me to the School of Agriculture where I helped brush an ox to collect a baggie full of "sample." My lipid extract turned out to be a very pungent "eau de ox" that I was quite proud of.

I tried multiple feeding experiments throughout the summer but never got the robust feeding response I was looking for. Some ticks definitely attached and slightly engorged, but no ticks fed similarly to those fed in vivo on guinea pigs. I hope that the project will be continued at Libor's Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Vector and Pathogens because a working in vitro feeding method could greatly expand their research possibilities. It would be nice to see this work out for such a great group of researchers.

One of which, Ondra Hajdusek, a PhD student that oversaw our work for the first half of the summer, really helped to make us feel more comfortable in our new working and cultural environments. He couldn't help much with the feeding experiments, but he was always quick to lend a hand when I needed something not readily available, like organic solvents and cow hair. Ondra was also the first to introduce us to Czech food and music. Ondra and I agreed that gulas was our favorite Czech dish. I think we all agreed that Kabat, the most famous rock band to come out of the Czech Republic, wasn't actually very good but still our favorite Czech band nonetheless. How could "Dirty Socks Ballad," from the greatest hits album, be anything but a classic?

Slowly throughout the summer we became more acquainted with other members of the lab, and some even took us out for karaoke and dancing. On our last day in the Czech Republic, Libor treated us to a trip around Southern Bohemia to sample Bohemian food and admire a few of many stunning castles in the area. The Bohemian landscape is honestly breathtaking, and I was glad to have such remarkable images to look back upon among all the memories I have from my summer abroad. I wasn't able to bring back the results I set out to obtain, but data or no data, I had eleven weeks of invaluable experience living on my own and taking responsibility for my own experimental design. I feel more confident now that I can handle my own research project, and I'm sure by the second or third attempt, I might even have some results to write home about.

Amy Alabaster, BRAVO! student with Dr. Libor Grubhoffer's Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Vector and Pathogens, Institute of Parasitology, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic and UBRPer in Dr. Roger Miesfeld's lab, Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics