Time Flies by Annabelle Jin

​Hi everyone, it’s me again! My time at TRIP has really flown by. It’s incredible how I went from knowing nothing about flies to being able to sort them on ice and expertly transport them from one vial to another. I have gotten the chance to know my lab mates and learn about their own passions for science through their independent projects. I also got to explore my own interests through my independent project, which investigated whether or not female fertility could recover after a period of starvation.

You might be wondering why this is important, and why I chose this question. The incidents of eating disorders have increased in the past few decades, and it’s no coincidence that usage of social media has increased exponentially since then as well. Social media has become ubiquitous in today’s society, with many people spending hours of their time glued to their phone screens. It has given rise to a very image- and health-focused world, with users being constantly exposed to filtered and often altered pictures that give unrealistic expectations of how someone should look. All of this has been linked to negative body image and disordered eating behavior. In addition, the relationship between recovery from an eating disorder and female fertility needs to be studied because the average onset for anorexia nervosa is 18 years, the average duration is 8 years, and the average age that women in the U.S. have children is 28 years.

That doesn’t leave a lot of time for recovery.

So, for my independent project, I starved flies for two days and allowed them to recover for one week. I tested female fertility right before recovery began after starvation, five days after (a medium recovery time), and seven days after (a long recovery time). I did this by counting the number of embryos that were laid by the female flies, and then finding out how viable the embryos were by quantifying the percent of embryos that hatched in two days. From my results, I found that the flies were essentially infertile before they were allowed to recover from starvation. However, female fertility improved when the flies were given enough recovery time. In fact, the fertility rates of the starved flies returned to the rates of the control flies by Day 7. However, the percent hatching data was inconclusive, as my data suggests that starvation may not have as big of an impact on embryo viability as it did on fertility.

The results of this experiment have real-life implications— survivors of eating disorders still have a chance at having children and a family. That’s what truly really matters in my mind.

I can’t wait to share my experiment with everyone at the symposium!