The Continued Adventure by Janay Cammock

Hello again! Last time you heard from me I was simply introducing myself where I had already completed my introduction experiment that was originally assigned. The question I was assigned was how the intake of rhodiola in the fly diet and inflammation affect fly alertness through negative geotaxis. I hypothesized that inflammation of the stomach would result in negative effects to their energy, while the usage of rhodiola would increase their energy in general. My reasoning being that rhodiola is often used to help with gastrointestinal inflammation and is used to improve energy, stamina, strength and mental capacity, so distributing this to flies who weren't already affected with stomach inflammation would have an increased energy. My data unfortunately did not represent my hypothesis, instead the data revealed that the flies stayed relatively sluggish regardless of the fact that some of them were exposed to rhodiola.

So far in the program, we have chosen what we want to explore for our independent project, and have planned the first week of our independent projects, but have only completed one day of the experiment.  The first day only included sorting flies, creating food which was mixed with our drug of choice. My independent project will be testing the effects that Lead and Bisphenol A contaminants in food have on developing flies (pupae). I have chosen to focus on this because of my interest in food contaminants in our food. While we already have a clear idea as a society that Lead contamination negatively affects the health of vulnerable parties such as infants, the studies on the health effects of Bisphenol A are a lot more unexplored which is why I chose to focus on these two contaminates, while Lead will act as a comparison. To test this I will be using a larval locomotion. 

Thank you for taking the time to read, I will see you in the next blog!