Middle Of the Road by Austin Choi

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Hi everyone, it’s been a while!  I cannot believe that it has been 5 weeks since the start of TRIP.  Time is definitely flying by, but I’ve sure learned a lot in these past weeks.  The project I’ve been working on during this time is my kickoff experiment, in which I studied the effect of soap and Vitamin D3 on fly motility.  I hypothesized that the soap, due to its inflammatory properties, would inflame the intestines and decrease motility.  I also hypothesized that Vitamin D3, which has anti-inflammatory effects, would help restore some of the motility compromised by the soap.  These substances’ impact on fly motility was quantified using the negative geotaxis assay.  This process of collecting data helped me familiarize myself to the TRIP lab.  After conducting the negative geotaxis assay, I collected the data and entered into a spreadsheet to calculate the percent of relatively mobile flies and create a chart that compared the motility of the flies across the experimental groups.

 I found that soap decreased motility, as predicted by my hypothesis, and that Vitamin D3 essentially had no effect on motility, proving the latter part of my hypothesis wrong.  After the experiment, I made a slideshow presenting my project and its results.  The process of creating the slideshow and Dr. Leystra and Dr. Valdes’ insightful comments taught me how to present my findings to not my peers but also a more general audience.  Overall, this kickoff experiment exposed me to what my independent project will be like, whether it be making drug stocks, performing assays, collecting and analyzing data, or presenting.  

For my independent project, I decided to study the effect of microbiome health on motility.  I chose this topic as many aspects of our lifestyles can lead to decreased microbiome health, such as stress, lack of sleep, diet, inactivity, and improper antibiotic use.  I decided to study the effect on motility as it is not directly correlated to microbiome health, and I think it would be interesting to see how overarching the effects of poor microfloral health can be.  To answer my research question, I plan to create 4 groups of flies (control, pro/prebiotic-exposed, antibiotic-exposed, and pro/prebiotic + antibiotic-exposed) and perform the negative geotaxis and larval locomotion assays on them to collect data on the magnitude of their movement.  I will start this process next week and I am BEYOND excited!

Until next time.