Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My science buddy and I decided on a project along the lines of this:

Since insects are really resistent against bacterial infection, due to certain cellular and protein structures, we decided to introduce crushed cricket solution in an animal's sustanence supply. We were then going to introduce the animal to bacteria a to the animal that hasn't eaten the insect and to the animal who has. So our question is, "Can eating insects prevent infection?"

Is this a good project idea?

And where can we get bacteria?

To determine if your project is a good idea...
Do you have good background information?
Has something similar already been done? If so, try to make your
project a little different.
Can you quantify your data?

Make sure you get permission to use animals.

You can get bacteria from the Carolina company
https://www2.carolina.com/webapp/wcs/st ... &langId=-1

Good Luck.

I took a year in Bio. I haven't heard of another such project. Well, the only hard part is getting the materials, including bacteria and the animals. We are permitted to use any animal that isn't in the chordata phylum without written consent from anyone. If we want to test on an animal in the chordata phylum except a human, we need to full out a permission form from the board of education. If we want human subjects, we need to go through a series of terminals, which would take about 3 months.

Thanks for the Carolina company link.

You probably don't want to use humans in your project; it's hard to get volunteers and it's time consuming.

If you're entering a competition such as Intel, they state on their website "No projects involving live non-human vertebrate animal experimentation will be eligible...
Live vertebrates are defined as any live, non-human vertebrate, mammalian embryo or fetus, bird and reptile eggs within three days (72 hours) of hatching, and all other vertebrates at hatching or birth."
However, there are exceptions to this. Here's the link to the Intel Rules:
http://www.sciserv.org/sts/students/rules.asp

As long as you are aware of the regulations, you have a good project.
Good Luck.

Hi Matt,

This sounds like an interesting project. I'm curious to see how it turns out.

Make sure to research your bacteria carefully. You will want to choose a species that will cause visible symptoms in your animal subject: either making it sick, or even killing the animal. Then you will need to check the biosafety level of the bacteria and make sure to get SRC approval BEFORE performing the experiment.

Because your experiment will involve making an animal sick (or worse), I STRONGLY suggest using another invertebrate model organism. For example, C. elegans (a type of nematode worm) and Drosophila (fruit flies) are both invertebrate model organisms that have been used to study immunity. If you perform a Pubmed search on either of those organisms, you should be able to find a couple of species of bacteria that cause disease or kill the animals. I think you should be able to get SRC approval for using these invertebrates. However, using any vertebrate organism will likely be very difficult.

Once you find a suitable model animal and a suitable bacterial pathogen, you'll need to make sure to research both organisms for biosafety requirements and make sure to include this in your experimental design.

If this sounds like a good idea to you, let us know and post back if you need any help.

Best of luck,
Linh