TRIP INITIATIVE
  • Home
    • About Us
    • FAQ
    • Contact
  • Blog
  • ALUMNI GALLERY
    • Ursinus 2015
    • Temple 2015
    • WTHS 2016
    • Temple 2016
    • WTHS 2017
    • Temple 2017
    • WTHS 2018
    • Temple 2018
    • WTHS 2019
    • Temple 2019
    • WTHS 2020
    • WTHS 2021
    • Temple 2021
    • WTHS 2022
    • Temple 2022
  • Apply to TRIP
  • Donate

Regular updates from students in TRIP

Off With Their Heads! by Katherine Li

5/18/2021

0 Comments

 
Everyone is so nice, and...I feel like I have become part of a very supportive family.
I can’t believe the program is more than halfway over! Time really does fly!​
Picture
Everyone is so nice, and, even though I still don’t know what the lower halves of their faces look like, I feel like I have become part of a very supportive family. ​We’ve begun our independent projects, but before that we each conducted an introductory experiment. My introductory experiment was about the effect of the drug Valerian on the anxiety of flies stressed with UV radiation. Through doing that mini project, I learned how to sort flies on ice, do the open field centrophobism test (a test that measures anxiety), and received a lot of tips on how to give a good presentation. 
Picture
Although that was really interesting, I wanted to do something different for my independent project. The microbiome, your gut bacteria, is a hot topic in research right now and scientists have found that it has potential impacts on a large variety of things, the most obvious being human health and disease. Another topic of increasing concern is Type II diabetes and obesity, which are becoming more widespread issues. I want to see if changing the microbiome would have any impact on glucose metabolism in flies. Talking through my idea with Dr. Leystra, Sruthi, and Mason helped me get a clearer picture of what I was going to do in the next few weeks. I decided to use a probiotic to increase bacteria quantity and diversity, although I have yet to confirm whether it actually did so. I also have to give some of my flies a really high-sugar diet to induce diabetes. 
Picture
Now to the good stuff… beheading the flies! The glucose assay indirectly measures glucose metabolism by measuring how well a pink-colored solution absorbs light so a big part of the procedure is cutting the heads off the flies, as the eyes of fruit flies are red and the pigment would mess up the data. Even with a microscope, it’s quite hard to behead them without cutting off some of their body as well because flies are just so tiny. Dr. Purdy helped me a lot with the rest of the procedure because there are a lot of steps and equipment. Unfortunately, the spectrophotometer was malfunctioning, so I wasn’t able to get numerical data. However, the varying shades of my pink solutions indicate that there were indeed different levels of glucose, which is a good sign.​
As I see what is working and what isn’t I will probably make a lot of changes to my project, and I’m really excited to see how it will turn out! ​
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    August 2017
    July 2017

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Blog 1: Introductions!
    Blog 2: Planning An Independent Project
    Blog 3: Reflections

Company

About
Fox Chase Cancer Center

Support

Contact
​Menu
WEBSITE DESIGN INFORMATION:
The TRIP Initiative website was built by Alesandra (Sasha) Temerte (TRIP@TU'17 alum) ​and is not a product of Fox Chase Cancer Center
© COPYRIGHT 2022. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
WEBSITE DESIGN BY ALESANDRA SASHA TEMERTE
LOGO DESIGN BY ARNAV DHINGRA
  • Home
    • About Us
    • FAQ
    • Contact
  • Blog
  • ALUMNI GALLERY
    • Ursinus 2015
    • Temple 2015
    • WTHS 2016
    • Temple 2016
    • WTHS 2017
    • Temple 2017
    • WTHS 2018
    • Temple 2018
    • WTHS 2019
    • Temple 2019
    • WTHS 2020
    • WTHS 2021
    • Temple 2021
    • WTHS 2022
    • Temple 2022
  • Apply to TRIP
  • Donate