New Chapter: Buzzing Around the Lab by Punam Mojumdar

Hey everyone, it's been quite some time since I’ve created a blog, and much has changed. We are now knee-deep into the program, and time has been moving incredibly fast in TRIP. It’s hard to believe how much we have already done. From meeting new people to meeting our small little flying friends, everything has been a learning experience. I can say that I’ve already learned much from Dr. Austria, Dr. Nick, and Dr. Valdes, and will continue to do so. Before this program, I hated fruit flies, but because of the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to learn about the entirety of the fruit flies, including why we use them as a model organism. 

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Over the past few weeks, we have wrapped up our kickoff experiment, which gave us an opportunity to explore a research question from a list of topics, ultimately providing us with the experience of researching before we begin our independent project. For my kick-off experiment, I had chosen to investigate whether a high sugar diet affects female fertility and whether fenugreek, a natural compound, could help reduce any negative effects from sugar. The experiment wasn’t at all smooth sailing, as there were many complications :( because an unfortunate fate had befallen my flies before they had served their purpose (they died…not all(!) but some). Fortunately, with the help of Dr. Austria I was able to figure out another method to solve my problem. Regardless of the tragedy, the results of my experiment concluded that fenugreek does indeed improve female fertility at some expense, but unfortunately it doesn’t help reduce the negative effects sugar has on fertility. 

Once our kickoff experiment was completed and we had presented them, it was time to begin our independent projects. For me, the hardest part was narrowing down a topic, as there are so many possibilities in biomedical research. After some research and deep reflection,  I decided to focus on how stress during early life affects physiological resilience later in life, specifically looking at neuromuscular and metabolic health.

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I was originally inspired by the concept of resilience—how some individuals are able to recover or adapt after experiencing stress. Many people throughout the world experience stress early in their lives, whether from challenging environments, difficult circumstances, or even dietary stressors, and I wondered how these experiences might influence the body as it develops into adulthood. My project uses fruit flies as a model organism to study this: through the exposure of early-life stress and then observing their neuromuscular and metabolic health later, I can measure how well their systems recover or adapt, through the use of two different assays, negative geotaxis and the depression assay. In other words, their physiological response allows me to measure their resilience—the ability to bounce back from challenges.

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This also connects to a relatable issue among students like me: burnout. Many young souls often push themselves to their limits due to social pressures from school, extracurricular activities, and our own personal responsibilities. By understanding how early life stress impacts resilience at a biological level, I hope that this project can provide insight into why some individuals are more vulnerable to stress later on, while others are better able to cope. 

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Well, that's all for now! I’m excited to see where this goes, and I’ll be sure to update everyone on the journey!!!