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Robotic Automation of Fruit Fly Analysis
Background
For some time, researchers at Tufts New England Medical Center have been studying the effects of a serotonin gene, 5-HT, on the food intake of fruit fly larvae. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter in the brain that regulates mood, emotion, sleep and appetite. Because of the growing obesity epidemic, the effect of serotonin on the food intake of fruit fly larvae is being studied to better understand the genes that cause overeating.
There are a few reasons why fruit flies are used to study genetics. Fruit flies have a completely mapped genome which makes it easy to locate certain genetic disorders, such as diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. In addition, 75% of the genes found in fruit flies have a human homolog, meaning the gene is also found in humans. For this research, third instar larvae is used because they feed continuously for 2 days, making it easy to study their food intake.
At Tufts-NEMC, PhD candidate Kerry Garrity is manually breeding, feeding, cleaning, and analyzing the effects of 5HT on third instar larvae. This tedious manual labor allows her to look at only 50 fly lines per week. With approximately 25,000 mutant fly lines, completion of her research will take up to 10 years. With the help of an automated robotics system, 16 fly lines can be fed, washed, and imaged in under an hour.
During the 2004-2005 school year, Seniors Sam Kortz and Melissa Pickering designed a system that would automate the manual labor Kerry was performing. They spent two semesters creating this system, but unfortunately were unable to perform any tests with their new device.
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