Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hii,
I would like to do a project on the behavior of fruit flies and I would like to monitor the activity of the fruit flies. I have done research and there is a DAM2 activity monitor available but it is really expensive... I was wondering if there was another alternative to monitor the behavior. Also, I would like to see the effects of royal jelly or something that increases the dopamine in flies so if you have any ideas on how dopamine effects functions of the flies and how to test that. Lastly, is there anywhere where I can find flies that are deficient in dopamine online available for purchase or should I teach the flies learned helplessness by placing them on a heat source and later to see if the jelly worked could I place them back on the heat source and to see if it took them longer to give up?

Thanks
Molly

Molly,

Don't send separate messages! Keep them all together. If you don't get an answer right away, post again but use the same thread, otherwise I won't see your other questions.

OK. I answered your later question and asked you to explain what your hypothesis was. After reading what you wrote in this post, I'm still not clear on your question. Are you simply wondering what effect dopamine has on fruit fly behavior? I'm sure royal jelly has lots of other things in it beside dopamine, so how will you be able to say that whatever effect you see is due to dopamine only?

The only way you can test something on an organism is to have a pure sample of the compound. You can probably buy dopamine from some chemical supplier but it would not be cheap. Measuring dopamine concentration would be the real challenge and for that I think you would need access to a biochemistry lab with an HPLC set up, or some kind of chromatographic separation instrument that would allow you to identify dopamine specifically. This would be very difficult for you to do on your own. You would need a mentor, I think, along with access to the equipment and reagents.

Maybe you should modify your proposal to just feed royal jelly to the flies and then measure some type of behavior. Doing accurate chemical measurements of a compound like dopamine in flies would be a major project in itself.

Finding fruit flies with a genetic modification to delete dopamine production is possible but unlikely. There may be a company that sells mutant fruit flies, but I'm not familiar with this organism. Researchers will sometimes provide materials to other researchers, but you have to show a significant need as part of a research program.

Think some more about this and post again. I can help you, but only with things that you are able to do.

Sybee