Solution Solutions by Isabel Kim

The first few weeks at TRIP have been quite the adventure! I know the flies certainly have… So far, I have accidentally killed at least 20 flies, let a few more than that escape, and severely traumatized the unlucky survivors. While the flies have been relaxing and enjoying themselves, I’ve found my first introduction into hands-on research to be riddled with tons of unexpected twists, setbacks, and learning experiences. To start, my health has not been so great these past few weeks, so my kickoff experiment didn’t go exactly as planned. My shaky hands and delayed reaction time probably gave the flies a good deal of trauma when transferring them to do an open field test, explaining why, when tested, the flies didn’t move! Additionally while moving flies back and forth I might have accidentally dislodged some of the food resulting in a sticky fly food-fly sandwich that probably resulted in low number of progeny.

If anything, the data that I’ve gained from this experiment mostly lies in the lack thereof. My failure in carrying out  a lot of routine techniques for transferring flies was unfortunate, but only serves to highlight the one way to get better- more practice! Although I made a lot of mistakes here, I largely expected this and walked away with a few major takeaways going into my independent project:

• Be gentle! I’m already traumatizing the poor flies enough, they don't need to develop a concussion on top of all the emotional damage I’m causing them.
• Be patient… Keep the flies on ice long enough so that they’re fully knocked out, there are too many escape artists out there.
• Don’t try to be a chef. No one likes fly food-fly sandwiches, especially not the flies.

For the independent project, I want to assess the impacts of bisphenol A (BPA) on depressive symptoms in flies. Last year, I was asked to find some data on the neurological impacts of common organic pollutants involved in plastic manufacturing, and to my despair, couldn't really find any. So when I saw that BPA was on the menu of drugs available in the TRIP lab, I decided that now would be a good time to actually produce some data. As well as assessing the impact of BPA alone, I want to see if a few well studied antidepressants, or drugs used as antidepressants can alleviate any potential depressive symptoms caused by the BPA. The main problem here, along with my terrible hand eye coordination, will be solubility. In order to add the drugs to the fly food, I have to get them in fly safe, liquid form. Because BPA is largely insoluble in water, I have to find some other way to get it into the food without it recrystallizing. Fingers crossed that my efforts don't fail as disastrous as the kickoff experiment, but until then, I will keep you updated! That's all for now!