Adios, TRIP by Maha Vijayakrishnan

​Time definitely flew by twice as fast at TRIP since I planned so much work out for myself. I tested the impact of bitter gourd on my fruit flies’ activity levels and gut microbiomes so I could analyze its overall impact on the body. However, this was no easy feat, as simple as it may sound. For example, I had to learn how to handle the flies delicately so that they did not escape or die. It still is a little hard, as Dr. Purdy caught me red handed when I accidentally massacred a few of my flies into my food just the other day. 
​Sorry!

Also, taking exact measurements has never been more important since inexact measurements can significantly impact a fly. With small lessons such as these in my head, I was able to accurately execute my assays. Although I had hypothesized that bitter gourd would increase the diversity of bacteria in our gut, my results did not show any diversity. Instead, I saw more bacteria in the flies that consumed bitter gourd, and they resembled the amount of bacteria in flies that consumed probiotic pills. Since probiotics are supplements that promote human health by increasing the bacteria in our body, I can infer that bitter gourd will definitely help gut health. 

Performing experiments in TRIP gave me a glimpse into the scientist life and just how complicated procedures could become (regardless of whether the experimental question is simple or not). Not only that, I learned to work with my labmates and loved making friends who actually laugh at my silly science jokes. I will miss having fun with my wonderful mentors and friends as well as working in the lab, but I am very grateful for this learning experience. 

However, in my negative geotaxis assay-- which tests fly activity-- I did not see promising results at first. My control flies and my flies that consumed bitter gourd were equally active. These flies were only on the diet for 3 days, which may have not been long enough to see a difference. Therefore, I tried to test the offspring of my experimental flies and found that 85.7% offspring that consumed bitter gourd were very active while 61.7% of my control offspring were very active.

​In short, consuming bitter gourd daily in the long term can significantly improve activity levels!