Flying through our Kickoff Experiment!!! by Samhita Ganti

Hey Everyone! Long time no see! These past 5 weeks have been so eventful, and I am glad to say that I learned a LOT. For these past weeks, I have been working on my kickoff experiment, where I studied the effects of St. John’s Wort and disrupted circadian rhythm on fly anxiety. I predicted that a high amount of St. John’s Wort, my drug, would induce a higher anxiety in the flies and that constant darkness, my stressor, would also cause a spike in the anxiety as well. Although, I thought that if this stressor and drug were to work together, that the fly anxiety would calm down and decrease overall. I was able to test the impact of these variables by conducting the Open Field Test, which tested for the anxiety of the flies. Being able to conduct this experiment helped me to become comfortable with the lab, the equipment, and of course my favorite, the flies.  

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After conducting this test, I was able to quantify the amount of time the female flies spent in the middle of the plate vs the amount of time they spent towards the edge. When doing my research, I was able to understand that the more time the flies spent towards the edge of the plate would showcase that the flies were more anxious overall. In my experiment, I found that constant darkness certainly increased the flies' anxiety, and when the St. John’s Wort was paired with the constant darkness, it decreased their anxiety, but then St. John’s Wort did not fully counter the effects of the stressor.  Looking at my data, I was not able to answer one part of my hypothesis relating to the individual St. John’s Wort vial because I went through something that any good scientist goes through… a couple of mistakes. After collecting my data, I was able to present to my peers and receive insightful feedback from my mentors, Dr. Austria and Dr. Valdes’.  Overall, this kickoff experiment provided me with a great start to my TRIP experience.

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​My independent project takes a little bit of a different route, one that I am so excited to be going down. I decided that I would want to study the effect of Vitamin E on different amounts of a sugar diet and how this would affect fly health and sensitivity to pain. I thought this would be interesting to study, as I know many people in my life who struggle with diabetes, and I want to see how this can have an effect on their health and sensitivity to pain. I am so VERY eager to start this process and to continue learning more!!! 

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