Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi! I'm planning to do a project on the effect of an extract on fatty liver. The problem is, we aren't allowed to test on human subjects, and I would rather not test on animal subjects. Is there any way to simulate the fatty liver condition, or test triglyceride formation, or are there readily available fatty liver cells that can be used to determine effectiveness? As a high school researcher I'm looking for feasible methodology or a simpler but still reliable and scientific way to test something. Something along the lines of, investigating cell division in lieu of testing anti-cancer properties. Any advice on the best way to carry out my experiment would be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much!

Hi,

Welcome to Science Buddies! This is a really great idea for a potentially prize-winning science project. However, it will be challenging to design an experiment, so you need to do more reading to help you narrow your topic. You are looking for the perfect experiment that will give you measurable results to answer your questions. Here are some ideas to consider:

Do you have access to a laboratory that has tissue culture facilities? If so, then you could test the effect of the fruit extract on tissue culture cells. This would be an expensive project and you would need access to a lab and someone who could help you.

Or, perhaps you could measure the protective effect of the fruit extract to ultraviolet light exposure. Does your high school lab have facilities for growing bacteria? Here is a project from the Science Buddies website that would give you an idea about how to proceed with this type of project:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p017.shtml

The physiological effect of fruit juices has been shown to be due to their antioxidant properties, so perhaps you could measure the levels of antioxidants in the fruit extract. Here is an article that describes this type of project using a commercially available test kit which would require a spectrophotometer. There are other methods for doing this type of measurement if you are interested in pursuing this idea.

http://www.annclinlabsci.org/content/32/2/193.full.pdf

You could also do a project using liver enzymes. Here is an example of a project from the Science Buddies website that uses one liver enzyme, catalase. There are a number of liver enzymes available that you could use to design an experiment.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p030.shtml

A project using animals would be good, but you would have to make sure you have the proper facilities and follow all of the rules for this type of project. Be sure and read all of the rules before deciding to do a project using vertebrate animals.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... mals.shtml

Invertebrates have a hepato-pancreas that serves the same function as a vertebrate liver and contains many of the same enzymes, and there should be no problem getting approval to do a project using an invertebrate. One organism, Caenorhabditis elegans, a free-living transparent nematode has been used for this type of research, and you should be able to design an experiment with this organism. The Wikipedia article on this organism includes some additional references that should be useful for your background research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caenorhabditis_elegans

I encourage you to do more reading and select an experiment that you have the resources to complete. Please post back with more questions to let me know what you are thinking about doing.

Donna Hardy