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Goodbye TRIP by Rachel McCabe

12/12/2019

I think it is important when planning for the future to think outside of traditional career paths... it was comforting to hear from people who did not follow straightforward paths, or know what they were to do as high school students. I think this lesson will be important as I pursue my own career.

Another important lesson learned was time management. As I wrote about in my previous blog post, the first day we worked on our Independent Projects was a rude awakening. I realized that most of my tasks took far longer than I had anticipated, and I had to stay late to finish everything. After this experience, I planned out my work in more detail, and allotted more time to each task. I also learned that it is more useful to take the time to do careful, reliable work, rather than rushing and ending up with inaccurate results.

I truly cannot believe this program is coming to an end. The five weeks flew by, and I still have so much more I want to research! I have now finished all of my time in the lab, and will present my findings at the symposium next weekend. Overall, I didn’t make any crazy discoveries, but I learned a lot about the research process. Prior to TRIP, I had never worked on an Independent Research Project where I could completely design my own experiment. I had to learn how to construct a plan in a way that made sense with the time and resources I had available.

My second day working on my project, I mistakenly added the wrong amount of sugar to my agar solution. Without realizing, I used this solution in my Larval Memory Assay. I had already spent the whole session working on this assay, when I discovered my mistake. This experience was really frustrating, as it forced me to reevaluate my experimental design. Originally, I was going to spend two days studying the memory of adults, and two days studying the memory of larvae. However, after this incident, I had no data and only three days remaining. I knew that spending only one day on either the adults or larvae would not be enough to reach reliable results. I ended up changing my focus- to spend three full days working on larvae. This choice narrowed the focus of my research, but gave me more data on larvae memory.

While I have learned a lot through my research at TRIP, another important part of my experience has been the career talks. Before TRIP, I was very focused on becoming a doctor. This goal has not changed, but I am now thinking more seriously about trying to combine clinical work with research. I was really inspired by many of the career speakers, who had found unique jobs that capture their interests. I think it is important when planning for the future to think outside of traditional career paths, and find something that will truly be enjoyable. I also enjoyed hearing about the journeys the speakers had taken to reach their current careers. Frequently, it feels as though there is an exact path that must be followed to be successful. It was comforting to hear from people who did not follow straightforward paths, or know what they were to do as high school students. I think this lesson will be important as I pursue my own career.

Overall, TRIP was a really special experience. I learned so much about researching, working hard, and approaching a career in science. I would highly recommend this program to anyone interested in science, as long as they don’t mind dealing with bugs.

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Adios, TRIP by Maha Vijayakrishnan

12/8/2019

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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!

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Wrapping Up by Ari Sasson

12/7/2019

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If there is one thing I have learned in this program, it is that struggling early on should not dissuade you... instead of backing down from the task at hand, I asked for help and advice and watched my skills slowly grow."

Just five weeks ago, I had a stupid idea to give flies nicotine, and zero knowledge of how to do research of fruit flies. I wanted to test the effect of nicotine on memory, but I had little clue of how to accomplish that. Now, I have refined my idea and along the way learned numerous lab techniques, developed a hatred of the adult memory assay, and mastered the use of a paintbrush (I still suck at art, but at least I can pick up larva with ease). I’ve sorted countless numbers of flies, made way too much agar, and ultimately had a really good time.

In the 4 experimental days since my last blog post, I realized I needed to change a few things to make my experiment successful. For one, I had to change the assay I was focusing on.

Initially I set out to test memory using the adult memory assay, but after spending a whole day watching my flies die in the assay, I threw in the towel. Dr. Amanda Purdy told me to switch to the larval memory assay and not wanting more failure, I happily obliged. The next change to my experiment was ditching the use of ten times strength nicotine solution during the teaching of the assay. This made the assay too complicated, and it was impossible to make sure the larva would be in contact with the solution while completing the assay. If I had more time to complete my experiment, I would have tried making agar with the nicotine solution instead of water to see if that had an effect on the flies memory.

If there is one thing I have learned in this program, it is that struggling early on should not dissuade you.
My first time sorting flies didn’t go very well. I couldn't flick them into the vial, I mixed up males and females, and I let them drop into very wet food.

Instead of backing down from the task at hand, I asked for help and advice and watched my skills slowly grow.
The same can be said about the larval memory assay. On a particularly busy Thursday, I mismanaged my time and found myself learning the larval memory assay at 4:45. Even before I got larva out of the vial, I knew I would be very late that day. With Dr. Amanda Purdy by my side to help me, I learned the assay by doing two conditions at a time. Although frantic, I learned the steps of the assay, albeit messily. I lost flies left and right, ruined the agar plates almost immediately, and lost track of how many trials I had done, but at the end of the day the assay was learned. Over the next few experimental days, I kept at the larval memory assay, and by the end of the program I could do it with ease.

Overall, I am very glad to have had the opportunity to be a member of the TRIP initiative. I was very nervous at the beginning of the program, but over time felt more comfortable in the lab and science communication.

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Regular updates from students in TRIP

Goodbye TRIP by Rachel McCabe

Adios, TRIP by Maha Vijayakrishnan

Wrapping Up by Ari Sasson

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