Next Up… Flying Solo! by Hanaa Saleem

Hello everyone! I can’t believe so many weeks have already passed. Time is flying by so quickly! I've learned so much so far, from sorting fruit flies, recording developmental data (this includes # of pupae and # of empty pupal cases), micropipetting, and running the open field assay (this checks for fly anxiety levels). I especially learned the importance of labeling all your vials to make sure you stay organized, making data collection and the experimental phase as smooth as possible!

As of right now we just finished up our kickoff experiment and are moving onto our independent project. For my kickoff experiment I explored the effects of ginkgo biloba (a species of trees native to East Asia that are thought to aid in blood flow due to vaso-dilation) and head trauma on anxiety levels. In order to test this, I conducted the open field test, which determines fly anxiety levels when placed on an agar plate. The closer the fly is to the edge of the plate after some time has passed, the more anxious it is. Through this test I was able to conclude that head trauma increased fly anxiety levels the most across all the testing conditions, while just ginkgo biloba returned fly behavior and anxiety levels to regular levels seen in the control. It was interesting to see that when the stressor and the drug were combined, ginkgo biloba overpowered the negative effects of head trauma, resulting in overall less anxious flies. This basically means that ginkgo biloba is good for addressing anxiety!

Switching gears to the independent project, I wanted to look more into neuroscience since I am looking to go into the medical field. Did you know about 43% of the world suffers from neurodegenerative diseases? These diseases, such as Alzeihmers and Parkinsons, have commonly been linked to protein clumping and/or aggregates (failure of proteins to fold correctly or maintain their original forms) due to oxidative stress. This is particularly bad because these aggregates have the ability to interfere with many crucial cellular biological processes and hinder proteostasis (protein regulation) in the brain, significantly contributing to the development of neurodegenerative diseases. To dive deeper, I am looking into how oxidative stress (using hydrogen peroxide) and antioxidants (using vitamin B6) affects neurodegeneration by analyzing locomotion in both larvae and adult flies. This allows me to look at these diseases from a developmental point of view as well as in adults. I will be using the larvae locomotion assay and the negative geotaxis assay for this project. I’m so excited to see what I will be learning through this project and share my results with everyone at the end!