Fruit(fly)ful Ways to Spend Time! by Aarushi Jain

Every week we are learning new skills such as sorting flies...using assays, analyzing data, and presenting our findings...​I’m also excited to share my independent project! 

Hey everyone, I’m back! It has already been 5 weeks of TRIP (wow, time really does fly!). Every week we are learning new skills such as sorting flies (I was more so shortening the flies, since I kept killing them, but don't worry, I’m a lot better now!), using assays, analyzing data, and presenting our findings. Working with everyone in my session has been awesome, and I’m happy to say that I’ve made so many new friends!

As I had expected, sugar decreased the microbiome density of my flies, whereas licorice increased the microbiome density. Sugar and licorice together still decreased microbiome density, but not nearly as much as the sugar only vial. At the end of my screen, I gave a presentation to practice sharing and discussing my findings. So far, working with the fruit flies and assays has been a really cool experience. 

​To get us prepared for our independent projects, we all participated in different screens. My screen explored if licorice and sugar affected microbiome density (aka the flies’ gut bacteria). I got to conduct the microbiome assay, which measured the number and diversity of the bacteria inside my flies’ guts. I also collected developmental data by counting the number of pupae in my vials and counting how many of them had eclosed into adults.

I’m also excited to share my independent project! Narrowing down an idea was hard; I wanted to test all sorts of drugs and do all the different assays. In the end, I decided to study if ginger counters the effects that sugar has on anxiety and microbiome density. ​Sugar is known to increase anxiety and decrease microbiome density. ​I have seen these results in my diabetic grandpa and I began to wonder what drugs could counter the effects that sugar has. Since ginger is practically found in every Indian dish and is known to be an important aspect of a diet for a diabetic person, I decided it would be a good drug to test. I predict that ginger will help reduce the impact of sugar, but the effects of sugar will not completely vanish.

Additionally, I plan to test if my findings are maintained in offspring. As diabetes is a genetic condition, I am curious to see if it gets worse as it passes on. I don’t think that there should be much difference between parent and offspring, but maybe I’ll find something different! I can’t wait to see what I will learn from my independent project!