Coming to an End by Janay Cammock

As time slowly starts to close in with the Final Presentation happening next Saturday, I’ve come to realize just how quickly the time went by in the lab. From learning how to use micropipettes, experiment with fruit flies, and finally being able to think through scientific problems outside of a school setting which allowed a lot more freedom. Unfortunately I feel as if the independent part of TRIP ended much more abruptly than expected. If I had the possibility of more time I would have liked to explore the possibilities that my experiment gave me as well as expanding my research topic since it opened up a lot more interesting questions that I would have liked to explore. ​

My independent project centered on the potential negative effects food contaminants such as BPA (Bisphenol A) and Lead had on fruit flies developmental health and fertility. My justification for developing this project can easily be described, with climate change becoming an increasingly dangerous subject food insecurity and safety have also become a topic as well. Food contamination is already a problem since our food supplies still get contaminated and while there has already been a lot of research on Lead contamination and its effects BPA on the other hand has been less researched on. By the end of my experiment, I found interesting developments that weren't exactly expected that we're more vast than my hypothesis that the contaminants would negatively affect the developmental health of the flies.

While I had experienced a somewhat slow immersion into the program (due to being slow to work). Which resulted in a certain strain with in the program to catch up with the rest of my peers, I fortunately was able to adapt to the lab work and experimentation along with everyone else, while mastering all the necessary skills required for the lab work. I also acquired additional skills that would prove useful in the future that I had not indicated would be necessary. Throughout the program I had learned how to differentiate male and female fruit flies from each other, how to sedate them with ice and CO2, as well as learning how to find percentages of different amounts of liquids. Though by far the hardest and most stressful thing to learn in the lab was learning how to transport flies from different vials without sedating them, which required good timing and concentration to avoid losing flies. Thankfully as I continued with that process it became mundane and a lot less stressful.