The Start of My Project by Sanjit Shelukar

When it came time to pick my independent project, I had a couple ideas, but no idea how to actually do them. A topic I was interested in was how painkillers could affect a mother's offspring, so I decided to research that in fruit flies. I did some research and found out that painkillers can negatively affect a mother’s baby. For my project I decided to test three painkillers (Advil, Aleve, and Tramadol) to see their effect on a mother’s fertility. My next step was to decide how to actually do this project.

​​I decided to test the mother’s fertility after the fruit flies eat the drug and test the social ability of the new offspring.  I decided to use the Social Space Assay and the Male and Female Fertility Assay. So far, I made my vials with my drugs in them. Calculating the concentration of the drug was hard, but I got through it! Hopefully, everything will go right the next few weeks.