Halfway Through a TRIP to Remember by Richard Li

Hi everyone! It has been a month since the start of this wonderful TRIP, and we are approaching halfway to our destination. I told y’all in blog 1 that I love to challenge myself with new ideas and surround myself with new people, and the last five weeks have been a BLAST for me. I have learned how to make fly foods, sort flies, conduct behavioral assays, and also made a lot of new friends. I enjoyed every bit of it, so I want to express thanks to Dr. Purdy, Dr. Austria, Dr. Valdes, Mr. Cozzone, our TAs, and peers for making this TRIP such a memorable experience.

This week we have successfully concluded our kickoff experiment. For me, I conducted an experiment exploring the effect of intestinal inflammation on flies’ anxiety and if it could be mitigated through ingestion of Holy Basil. I utilized the open-field test to quantify the anxiety level of flies. During the open field test, I really overcame my fear and got familiar with the process of transporting and knocking out flies on ice. Through my experiment, I discovered that intestinal inflammation causes higher anxiety in flies and Holy Basil moderately mitigates this effect, while the difference is not statistically significant. I communicated this discovery with the rest of our classmates during the presentation and provided a lot of insights for future TRIPers who want to apply open-field tests.

In the rest of the TRIP, I will be conducting my independent project. My current idea is to test the effect of antibiotics-induced disruption of microbiota on overall immune health. Human consumption of antibiotics has increased by 48% since 2000. It is known that antibiotics will not only kill pathogenic bacteria but also the gut microbiome, causing a decrease in microbiome diversity.  I am curious if this process will have an effect on immune health and potentially make people more prone to disease in the short term, which is paradoxical because imagine you ingest something to kill bacteria, but it actually makes you more susceptible to bacteria. I am interested in this project because I like studying the interaction among the systems within the human body, in this case, microbiota-immune system interaction. 

During the brainstorming seminar, I realized that an unfeasible part of my program is to infect bacteria. But thanks to Dr. Austria’s support, right now I am working on designing a non-pathogenic protocol to quantify flies’ immunity through heat-induced melanization. I am SO EXCITED to start my independent project next week!

​I have learned how to make fly foods, sort flies, conduct behavioral assays, and also made a lot of new friends. I enjoyed every bit of it, so I want to express thanks to Dr. Purdy, Dr. Austria, Dr. Valdes, Mr. Cozzone, our TAs, and peers for making this TRIP such a memorable experience.