In the Thick of TRIP by Shloka Kari

Hello fellow fly enthusiasts! Just checking back in to tell you everything I’ve been up to so far in TRIP. For starters, we finished our initial kickoff experiment and became familiarized with various assays that we can potentially implement in our independent project. As a quick refresher, my kickoff experimental question was “Do disrupted circadian rhythms and melatonin impact fruit fly fertility”. The methods through which I researched this question included using grape plates and counting embryos for the female fertility assay. One thing I found myself struggling with was transferring the fruit flies from vials into conical tubes for embryo collection. I lost track of how many flies ended up flying away. But other than losing around ¾ of my flies, I loved the female fertility assay!

After analyzing my data from the assay, I found that a combination of melatonin and circadian rhythm disruption actually increases female fertility- which is not at all what I hypothesized would happen. We then presented our findings the week after, which was super informative and fun- I loved hearing about all the different projects my TRIP friends worked on! ​

This last TRIP session, we spent a lot of time bouncing off ideas for our independent project and then setting up a solid plan for the upcoming weeks. After really chipping away at and enhancing my initial research question proposal, my research goal now is to find out if gut health is related to female fertility. I will be exploring this by looking at the effects of a probiotic and an antibiotic on gut health and then running the female fertility assay (just like I did in my kickoff experiment!!) and analyzing if they have an impact on the number of embryos laid per female.

 This research topic is super interesting because it could possibly help us understand if healthy diets actually increase fertility. Also, I’m personally interested in this research because I find gut health, women’s health and reproductive science super interesting and really important, especially in today’s society. I’m really excited to begin my research and I’ll let you all know how it goes!

Stay fly -Shloka