My TRIP Experience by Julia Morris

Hello TRIP Community! 

For the past few TRIP sessions, I have been working on my independent project, trying to answer the question: How does withdrawal affect the mood and social interactions of flies?

I dispensed a certain concentration of coffee into the fly food and let them consume it for 5 days before transferring them into different vials. Half of them stayed consuming coffee (my long term coffee consumption flies) and the other half were moved into vials with no coffee in the food (my short term coffee consumption flies). Eventually I move the other flies into vials without coffee in the food. I tested all of these conditions with the social space assay, which tests the mood and social interactions of the flies. I also tested the offspring of the original flies who had been consuming coffee their whole lives with the social space assay. I moved the offspring into new vials without coffee in the food also.

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I was ecstatic to do this experiment because many of my school peers drink coffee and have to drink it everyday or they feel they can’t function. Consequently, many of them want to stop, but they don’t want to go through coffee withdrawal, so I was curious how going through coffee withdrawal would affect someone’s mood. And if I had more time, I would’ve tested their activity as well. 

Participating in the TRIP program was an amazing experience. I learned so much in the 2 days a week for 5 weeks I experienced. I even conducted my own experiment! I did assays and analyzed data! It still seems crazy to me that I have learned so much to be able to accomplish that. I enjoyed this so much, and I liked sharing my experience with you all!