Profile of Lab March 2013
“LIFE-AND-DEATH battles rage in Robert Wheeler’s lab at the
University of Maine. The combatants — zebrafish and Candida albicans—fight to the bitter end in glass-bottom microplates.
Similar perilous battles are being fought inside humans. The C. albicans fungus is a leading cause of hospital-acquired infection that annually kills several thousand patients nationwide.
During the staged scuffles in Wheeler’s lab in Hitchner Hall, anesthetized zebrafish are injected with Candida and placed in a gelatinous material called agarose.”