The End of an Era by Sara Dedhia

​Back in February I couldn’t think of a project to research and now I’m sad that my project has concluded. I tested whether fenugreek, a natural remedy, could mitigate the detrimental effects that caffeine had on fertility and development. On average, most American drink about 3 cups of coffee a day and that amount of caffeine can reduce fertility. Fenugreek, on the other hand, is a natural herb used in Indian cooking that is said to increase fertility. I chose a natural a remedy over a prescription medicine because my family generally turns to natural remedies to treat certain ailments. In the end, I wanted to test whether fenugreek could ameliorate the effects that caffeine had on fertility and development because it can be integrated into the diet and help coffee-drinkers with unsuccessful pregnancy attempts. To test my question, I performed the female fertility assay for both P1 and F1 generations and the social space assay.

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Being overzealous, I believed that I would have enough time and the assays would overlap perfectly… sadly it was quite the opposite. My fervent plans left me with ample amounts of work to complete even after the overlap period. In the end, though, I become much faster and better with my time and I even decided to add another assay into the mix: male fertility. My results supported my hypothesis, that fenugreek would ameliorate the effects of caffeine, so that gave me a lot of hope in completing all of my assays and beginning new ones!

Coming out of TRIP, I can say that I learned much more than just science. For any of you who are reading through these blogs and thinking about applying for TRIP, do it! I would absolutely recommend this program for those who have a deep passion for science and those who are trying to figure out whether research is something they’d be interested in. Whether you end up enjoying working with flies or completely hating them, you learn so many important skills such as collaboration, communication, time management, and multitasking. I am truly so grateful to have gone through TRIP because I realized that research may be a field that I am very interested in going into and I have acquired new lab skills and communication skills.

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The overall TRIP experience was amazing! Dr. Purdy, Dr. Leystra, and Dr. Gardiner were extremely helpful mentors and gave us so much guidance and help throughout the entire course, they pushed us to think beyond what we saw and encouraged us to try new things