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My First 2 Weeks with Flies by Jagger Azvolinsky

10/27/2020

This program has challenged me into thinking in a way that I have never thought before.

So far, my first few weeks at TRIP have gone very well! This program has challenged me into thinking in a way that I have never thought before. This new way of gathering and analyzing scientific data was quite challenging at first, but I have gotten more used to it as time has gone on. Many of the activities we have done so far have been beneficial to my understanding of this new lab setting, which will only improve in upcoming weeks.

Upon doing some research, I observed that more products are containing caffeine, and more people are also consuming this product as well. Because of this, I have decided to use caffeine as my drug of choice in this experiment. My stressor in this project will be overcrowding, since I would like to observe the social interaction between a large group of flies when they have been exposed to a large amount of caffeine. I will begin this experiment this upcoming week, so I will reveal my results in a future blog!

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Taurine and Flies by Venus Agbadan

10/26/2020

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Hey, it’s Venus again! The first few weeks of TRIP have been awesome and have gone by fairly quickly.

We started our screen projects where we were given a drug, stressor, and assay to complete, so we got to practice with lab procedures and presenting before we do the real thing. I was assigned to Senna, a laxative, and artificial sugar (Truvia). I was testing how they interact with the microbiome in flies’ guts and learned to do the microbiome assay! This assay was very long and time sensitive, but luckily Jackie, a fellow TRIP student, was also doing the microbiome assay. Going through it with her, Logan (one of our lovely TAs) and Dr. Gardiner helped me stay on point. We ended by presenting the data that we obtained in our screens. It was kind of scary, but the feedback I got after my presentation was really helpful and will make me feel more confident in my next one. Everyone in the morning session also had amazing slides.

Now, we have started working on our own independent project. I have decided to test the effects of taurine, a common ingredient in energy drinks, and Zoloft, an anti-depressant and anti-anxiety pills, on the cognitive function in larvae. I want to test this because as a junior in high school, my peers and I have extremely busy schedules that often result in drinking energy drinks such as Bang!, Monster, and Redbull. Unlike coffee, these energy drinks don’t just have caffeine, but ingredients such as taurine. I am curious to see how the drinks we use to keep us alert and awake in class affect how much we’re actually learning. Furthermore, many high schoolers suffer from anxiety and take SSRIs such as Zoloft. A lot of this anxiety and stress sometimes even has a direct correlation to school. I thought it would be interesting to see how taurine and Zoloft interact to discover if the capability of teens with anxiety to learn when they drink energy drinks compares to those who do not take anxiety medicine.

I’m excited to start my project and keep moving forward!

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Regular updates from students in TRIP

My First 2 Weeks with Flies by Jagger Azvolinsky

Taurine and Flies by Venus Agbadan

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