Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi there, I've been looking for a science fair project and I read some articles relating about caffeic acid. This chemical compound is found in numerous food items. A recent study in mice showed that caffeic acid produced renal-cell adenomas in females and a high incidence of renal tubular-cell hyperplasia in animals of each sex. In rats, it produced squamous-cell papillomas and carcinomas of the forestomach in animals of each sex and a few renal-cell adenomas in males. However, because a certain type of bacteria was found in rats' and mice's intestines, this was believed to be a source of bias. Therefore, there hasn't been any evidence that caffeic acid is carcinogenic to human. I was thinking of using fruit flies to conduct my experiment to see whether caffeic acid causes illness to human. Fruit flies have many characteristics similar to human and have often used in many cancer studies."

Hi!
That sounds like a very interesting idea, I would definitely consult your school science teacher as well as perhaps try to contact a university mentor so that you can have experience adult supervision to help you out with your project. Fruit flies are great research subjects and are often used in genetic studies because of their rapid growth and flexibility to adapt, here's a couple articles extolling the virtues of using fruit flies in research studies-
http://www.physorg.com/news158155616.html
http://nihrecord.od.nih.gov/newsletters ... tory05.htm
Best of luck to you!

Thanks for replying! I'm actually trying to get a head start on my next year Science Fair Project. This is just a preliminary idea, however, I'll take your word and try to contact a mentor for more information. Is there any way that I can send you or any experts private messages ? I just have a few other questions related to this topic and I'm uncomfortable posting it here. Thanks!

Hi Missybitsy,
Good for you for getting an early start on next year's project. We do not have direct correspondence between Science Buddies experts and students via private messages. However, if you have a question that cannot be posted in these forums, you can try sending it to [email protected] and ask them to forward it to experts in your subject area.
Looking forward to hearing more about your project.
Chris

Sorry for such a long break since I posted a reply on Science Buddies. I took your recommendation and contacted a college professor. Here is the feedback I received:

"Do humans or Drosophila carry the same type of bacteria? If you do the experiment in Drosophila you just need to be cautious about applying the result directly to humans as there are many confounding variables such as the bacteria you mention that may make the result for Drosophila not directly applicable to humans. So you should ask if an experiment on Drosophila would produce interesting information even if you could not say humans will react to caffeic acid exactly the same as Drosophila does. "

He also suggested that instead, I can determine if caffeic acid is a mutagen or not. Nearly all carcinogens are also mutagens and if caffeic acid is found to be a mutagen then it is likely also a carcinogen. I could use the Ames test, which involves using bacteria, to determine if caffeic acid is a mutagen.

According to this suggestion, do you believe that the use of drosophila to convince carcinogenic of caffeic acid is unsupportive ? Is proving mutagenic a better idea ? If I could confirm that drosophila doesn't carry any confounding bacteria, then can I continue with my original idea ? What else do you think I could possibly try ? Thank you very much for your time!

Hi MIssy,
I agree with the professor that it would be very difficult to convince science fair judges that results of experiments on Drosophila have direct relevance to humans, even under the best of circumstances. That does not mean that you can't do a great experiment with Drosophila, but you should be careful about how you interpret the results.
Hopefully the biologists will chime in with some additional comments and suggestions.
Chris