Blog #2 by Saurish Singh

It’s wild how quickly time flies. We are already at the halfway point of TRIP! Looking back, I have picked up so many new skills that seemed intimidating to me at first. I started my kickoff experiment which went pretty smoothly. I explored intestinal inflammation in fruit flies by using soap which caused oxidative stress on my flies in turn causing a decrease in motility. My drug milk thistle was supposed to combat this effect because it reduced oxidative stress. I did the negative geotaxis assay, which is a measure of overall health. This was an assay that was tricky at first; however, it was pretty enjoyable to do after the first few attempts. I saw how many flies climbed above 4 cm after a physical disturbance. My results were pretty interesting, milk thistle on its own improved the flies’ climbing ability and soap caused a dramatic drop. What surprised me most was that combining milk thistle with soap did not reverse the soap's harmful effects. 

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This experiment opened my eyes to how everyday substances can affect our bodies in ways we don’t think about. Thus I went on to focus on acrylamide for my independent research. Most people don’t even know that whenever they cook starchy foods at high temperatures, crispy fires, golden toast, or crunchy chips, they are creating acrylamide, a compound that is both a neurotoxin and a carcinogen at high concentrations and long exposure. Since we can’t really avoid it in our diets, I wanted to explore whether a broccoli derived compound-sulforphane can provide a shield, as it’s known to combat the effects of other carcinogenic compounds. My project tests four conditions: plain food as a control, sulforaphane alone, acrylamide alone, and both together. I’ll track how each group affects development, motor function, and memory, through the negative geotaxis assay, developmental data, and the larval memory assay. I’m really eager to discover whether dietary choices could actually counteract the damage from these toxins.

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