Week Ten

Hi guys!
I'm sorry I haven't posted in such a long time, but to be fair, I haven't had much new things to tell you about. I have experienced first hand that research is a lot of data collection, so for the last several weeks I have been doing larval turning, survival curves, and, as always, virgining.

As the project comes to a close, my team is beginning to wrap up the collection and analysis of the high sugar and high protein data. We have a full set of data for the high sugar larval turning, and though the results are currently inconclusive and not statistically significant, we are setting up a couple more tests and crosses to see if we can get results more similar to the ones Dr. Zarnescu obtain when she first did experiments with high sugar and protein. We are also still collecting flies for both the developmental and adult survival curves. For the developmental survival curves, the flies are hatched and raised on the high protein and sugar food, but for the adult survival curve, the flies are hatched on normal food and then transferred to high protein or sugar food. The adult survival curves are more applicable to a potential cure for humans, because ALS doesn't develop until adulthood and therefor wouldn't need to be treated until then.

So that's what I've been up to. I'm also working on my paper and presentation, and looking forward to hearing all about everyone's final products!