Wow, I am in complete shock that TRIP is almost over, time seemed to FLY by so fast. Looking back on this program, I can honestly say it has been a wonderful experience and opportunity that I was lucky to be a part of. Every week of the program I learned a new skill from how to use a pipette to nearly drowning fruit flies to measure their depression. The instructors and TA’s were extremely helpful and made the program enjoyable. The time in the LAB was a challenge, but a fun one indeed! I went from not knowing how to sort fruit flies or even use animals in a lab to model human processes, to running my own experiments and sleep depriving flies. To pick up where I left you off in my last blog, over the past few weeks I have been testing the effects of Sleep Deprivation and a Western Diet on Fruit Fly Mood, specifically depression and sociability. These two stressors were of great interest to me since the average American consumes over 3 times the healthy limit of sugar per day. The average American teen gets only 65% of the sleep they need. I was intrigued to study the effects of common stressors that everyday people experience on fruit flies. Current studies suggest that both a high sugar consumption and a lack of sleep correlate with extensive issues. Such as, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and many more, but the mood issues associated with these stressors is less studied and proven which is why I was interested in these effects first hand. To collect my data I used two Assays called the Social Space Assay which measured the average distance between the fruit flies, and the Forced Swim Test which measured how long flies swim to determine how depressed they were. What did the data show? Overall both sugar and sleep deprivation were shown to be bad for your mood in both tests. Sugar caused mostly slight negative effects while sleep deprivation was significantly worse, while the group with both stressors was by far the most affected.
Overall, TRIP is a wonderful program that undoubtedly helped me on my journey through life. I hope I can use the skills I learned in the future, and until next time, Nicholas Mento.
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How has it been 12 weeks? It is incomprehensible how fast my time with TRIP has passed. From week 1 of holding a micropipette for the first time to week 12 in the lab of swiftly sorting flies, I have gained invaluable skills. Thank you to Dr. Purdy, Dr. Leystra, the TAs, and Session B for making my Saturdays exciting and meaningful. Thanks to TRIP, I have an even greater appreciation for the research process and all that it entails. My independent research looked at the effects of aluminum-compounds found in antiperspirants on health and fertility. I was inspired by my personal issue of sweaty palms. However, aluminum is found in many commonly used deodorants and antiperspirants, so the findings are relevant to all. To evaluate its effect on health, I took a step back to see the most important indicator of health: fertility. Each week, I set up four vials with one control vial and three with increasing doses of Carpe, an antiperspirant with aluminum as the active ingredient. I was able to replicate my study 5 times and even got to look at the second generation or the progeny of three replicates to see long-term effects. To assess fertility, I used the female fertility assay that quantified the number of progeny produced over time. I also utilized the male fertility assay to assess the effects on male reproductivity. My time in the lab consisted of making food vials, sorting flies, setting up collection cages and grape plates, setting up smaller vials for the males, and counting hatched embryos. When quantifying the embryos per female ratio and the success rate of embryos (% hatching), I noticed a pattern. The data trend followed the Goldilocks effect where low and high doses had less progeny but the middle dosage was just right.
These hard and soft skills will be ones I can apply to whatever I do in the future. I am incredibly grateful to TRIP for this unique and unforgettable experience.
I remember as if it were yesterday that I stumbled into the TRIP lab, bright-eyed and ready to indulge in science. I can safely say that my craving for discovery and opportunities to learn has been satisfied. For the past few weeks, I have been hard at work on my independent project, which investigates if Bilberry Extract can ameliorate the negative effects of induced heat shock on Drosophila melanogaster health, as measured by negative geotaxis. In my work as an EMT on live 911 calls and stand-by community events, I have firsthand seen how detrimental heat shock can be on the average person and how there are virtually no medications that can prevent it. This fact troubled me deeply, and as I began investigating potential solutions to what seemed like a simple problem, I came across the antioxidant known as anthocyanins. Anthocyanins are known to have anti-inflammatory properties which can help with mobility. Bilberry Extract is packed with anthocyanins, and I began to question if this already-used supplement can also prevent the damaging effects of heat shock on mobility since heat shock infamously cramps the muscles of the affected person. In my experiment, I had 4 fly vials which included a control, a Bilberry Extract vial, a heat shock vial, and a fly vial that both received Bilberry Extract in its food and was heat shocked. My hope was to see the Bilberry Extract and heat shock combined vial have similar mobility percentages to the control vial, indicating that the supplement can reverse the effects of heat shock on mobility.
If someone were to tell me a few months ago that I would be so invested in laboratory work and the fascination of science, I would burst out into a hysterical laugh. But TRIP has taken me on a journey of self-discovery that has taught me what I truly love. I love the thrill of discovery and experimentation, as despite the challenges, the process of learning shaped me into a kid excited, rather than dreading, to learn. I have learned laboratory, scientific, and even personal skills that I am truly appreciative of, and I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Amanda Purdy and Dr. Alyssa Leystra for catalyzing my further love of science. Without them and their close mentorship, I would not be in the position and newfound mindset that I am in today. Thank you so much to TRIP’s very own TAs - Austin Cozzone, Jenan Hazazi, and Keith Thompson - for helping out with what I needed when conducting my research. To my future TRIP mates (and I am sure my present TRIP classmates can attest), this program is more than just a research internship, it is rather a mentorship on how to lead a life in science. Learning how to work with micropipettes and agar is one step, but a larger and more important one I learned was how to deal with difficulties and unexpectedness of research. This experience has taught me more than I could have expected and I am forever grateful for these past few months. Thank you all for reading these past few weeks of blogs and I hope the "TRIP" with me has been enjoyable.
Signing off one last time -Rohan Ramprasad TRIP has finally come to an end. I don’t even remember how many weeks it’s been, definitely double digits. I have picked up a lot of skills throughout this journey that will benefit me in the future. I have also picked up a lot of skills that I will probably never use again, but that's okay. Sorting on ice will definitely haunt my dreams though. I have faced many challenges throughout TRIP that have elevated my lab skills significantly. I am very pleased with my data that I have gathered from my independent project over the past couple of weeks. I explored the effect of Kratom on fly health, and did that through the lens of fertility as a particular aspect of health. To do this, I employed four flasks of exponentially higher and higher doses of Kratom and performed the male and female fertility assay to assess the effects of the drugs on the animals. I found that Kratom produces catastrophic effects on fly fertility and thus fly health. TRIP has helped me explore my interests in chemistry and biology much more than just the high school experience could. I have picked up substantial amounts of information and accumulated important skills like collaboration, time management, and efficiency. The aspects of fly biology that I explored in learning more about the organs and processes of the systems of interest have been extremely interesting and I am motivated to learn more in the future. Overall, TRIP has given me a medium to practice my interests in a research-based career and learn more about the lifestyle of a research scientist and as a public speaker. Thank you to Dr. Purdy, Dr. Leystra, and the TAs for making this possible!
Time flies when you’re having fun! I can’t believe I am already approaching Week 6 of TRIP. The past few weeks, I conducted my kickoff experiment examining the effect of valerian and constant darkness on female fertility. Using the female fertility assay, I quantified the number of embryos per female and the % hatching of embryos. More embryos per female and a greater % hatching indicate that the females are more fertile and produce more viable offspring. My results indicate that both valerian and constant darkness increase female fertility. However, I was surprised to see that many of the flies in the constant darkness vial died after the first 7 days, thus indicating the negative effects of a disrupted circadian rhythm (sleep/wake cycle). By combining valerian and constant darkness, not only did female fertility increase the most, but some of the negative effects of constant darkness were also ameliorated. Besides collecting data for my assay, I also learned how to collect developmental data by looking at the total number of pupal cases and then calculating the % eclosion (empty pupal cases/total pupal cases). In addition to learning basic lab skills such as making fly food, making grape plates, and sorting flies using CO2, I have seen how science is a process of trial and error. Sometimes you lose a couple of flies when transferring flies between vials or have difficulty distinguishing between an unhatched embryo versus a larva — and that’s ok. Some skills are harder to master at first such as sorting flies efficiently. However, I believe with practice, I will be sorting flies quicker in the coming weeks. Since the moment I stepped into the lab about 5 weeks ago, I have definitely grown as an aspiring scientist. For this, I am grateful for Dr. Purdy, Dr. Leystra, the TAs Austin and Keith, and my TRIP classmates. Looking ahead, for my independent project I am interested in comparing the effects of red yeast rice versus CoQ10 on overall health due to a personal connection to this topic. CoQ10 is a dietary supplement that helps improve heart health. My uncle takes various dietary supplements including CoQ10. After finding out that CoQ10 can be derived from red yeast rice, which is found in fermented red bean curd and other Chinese foods, I was curious about whether my uncle could eat foods with red yeast rice instead of taking CoQ10 tablets for similar health benefits. I look forward to examining this question in the coming weeks. Hi again, readers! These past few weeks have flown by quicker than fruit flies escape from the vials—and all of my TRIPmates would certainly agree that they’re pretty quick. But in all seriousness, I’ve had a lot of fun creating solutions, sorting fruit flies, presenting to the class and performing behavioral assays. My fantastic peers have certainly assisted me along the way and I have enjoyed getting to know them a little bit more. Fruit fly development has also been a blast to watch and since I absolutely enjoy counting birds, counting the number of pupae in a fly vial isn’t much different. Similarly, contrary to the reaction of some of my peers, I was delighted to have the opportunity to sort fruit flies into specific quantities. I enjoyed picking out the details between male and female flies, noting particular postures and field marks, just like with bird identification. For my introductory experiment, I determined how the yellow flower typically used for depression, St. John’s Wort, along with head trauma, affects anxiety levels in the flies. Using my newly acquired knowledge about making solutions and inducing head trauma, I inflicted these onto my flies. After waiting a few weeks, I performed the open field test assay, measuring how anxious flies generally gravitate toward the edge of a container while unconcerned flies generally stay toward the center. I concluded that flies with St. John’s Wort were less anxious than those with head trauma. Interestingly, the St. John’s Wort flies seemed to develop slower than the rest. I decided to research how monosodium glutamate (MSG) affects fruit fly fertility Now for the thing that’s been on my mind for nearly half a year now—my independent project! After a bit of deliberation, I decided to research how monosodium glutamate (MSG) affects fruit fly fertility. MSG has been involved in much of the average person’s daily diet, including my own. As a common ingredient in many diets, MSG has been subject to many conflicting studies about its true effects on your health. As a result, I plan on testing their fertility while recording developmental data. I’m excited to see how my results turn out and if I can help contribute to the MSG debate scientifically!
It’s hard to believe we’re almost halfway through the program already! The past few weeks have involved a lot of learning, experimenting, and collaboration. It’s also been really enjoyable getting to know everyone more!
For my independent project—after spending quite a while trying to sift through my ideas, I finally settled on noise pollution and its effects on overall health. Noise pollution is a major problem, especially in cities, that many people don’t even realize exists. It’s often overlooked because it’s not a tangible form of pollution the way air and water pollution are, but it’s pretty important as well! I experienced it a bit when I did a summer camp in the city. To me, it wasn’t too much more than an incredible nuisance, but studies show that, long term, it has adverse effects on sleep, stress, blood pressure, and more. Last time I was in the lab, we were working on fine-tuning our proposals for our independent planning projects. After a lot of planning, planning, and more planning, I now have a pretty solid idea of what I will be doing! I will be using the female fertility assay and also analyzing developmental data which will allow me to observe effects on oogenesis, spermatogenesis, embryogenesis, and overall health. I finally settled on noise pollution and its effects on overall health Next Saturday, I’ll be officially starting my project. I can’t wait to get started! Thanks for following along so far, and I’ll be back with more updates in no time!
I am finishing up my kick-off experiments, which, if you do not remember, focused on the effects of Ginkgo Biloba as a medicinal tool to treat brain damage. To do this, I treated the flies to a negative geotaxis assay, which generally measured their brain activity, as well as taking developmental data. Surprisingly, Ginkgo Biloba is an excellent brain healing tool! In terms of my independent project, I am interested in the effects of a relatively new drug. Kratom. It is an opioid adjacent substance whose research is very limited. From what we know, it acts as a stimulant at low doses and as a inhibitor at high doses, it also demonstrates the common pitfalls of opioids, its addictive nature, contribution to liver failure, and permanent neurological damage. I believe that researching Kratom on flies can provide a translational red flag for more research that can hopefully build into conclusive data regarding higher order animals such as primates or humans.
The first few weeks in the program have flown by swiftly. However, reflecting on the past few weeks has shown me how much I have learned. We are only halfway through, and I have grown much as a scientist and person! The program has taught me how to analyze data, work with fruit flies, and, most importantly…work through new and challenging situations through problem-solving! Critically thinking about a problem can offer a unique solution that may not be as obvious at first sight! Additionally, throughout the first few weeks, I have connected with the other TRIP professors and members, making meaningful friendships.
My interest in blue light prompted me to analyze the effect of long-term exposure to blue light on adult memory My interest in blue light prompted me to analyze the effect of long-term exposure to blue light on adult memory. I plan to expose fruit flies to increasing amounts of blue light and quantify their memory through the Adult Memory Assay! The Adult Memory Assay consists of negative reinforcement tasks where the flies are exposed to one scent, which they associate with a negative action, and another scent, which they associate with a positive action. I am hopeful this experiment will be successful in the coming weeks and reveal something about the long-term effects of blue light. In the coming weeks, I will record data and perform my experiment! I will keep everyone updated! See you in a little.
This initial experiment was exciting to run. It was fascinating to perform the “Social Space Assay” which places fruit flies in small social chambers. The closer they are the more “sociable” they are and vice versa. Although presenting this information was a different story… Personally, I’ve never been the greatest presenter and that’s not something I’m ashamed of but I received helpful feedback to hopefully improve my presentation skills. Other than that I finally get to create my own experiment. I’d say the hardest part was actually creating one, at first I really thought I had a great idea but it turns out that it wasn’t good enough. Luckily I was able to come up with something. As of lately I haven’t been able to fall asleep without the sound of my fan. This then led me to think about White Noise along with the different colors of noise. Different colors of noises have different properties ranging from frequencies to amplitude. This led me to wonder which sound would be the best for memory. In order to test their effectiveness I will perform the larval memory assay, where I would condition larvae to associate a smell with a sound. Then I would create two sides, one that is conditioned and the other not conditioned to see if the larvae remembered the sound. That’s just a barebone explanation of the assay but I just can’t wait to see the results!
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