My Road to Research

Everyone's road

to research is a particularly interesting thing as it allows for students to really dive deep into their own passions and create a project that they truly love. My research focuses specifically on using an amino acid of green tea as a treatment for traumatic brain injury in Caenorhabditis elegans. Let me tell you a little about mines

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Season 1, Episode 1: The Summer Before Junior Year

Normally, I would not start here, but I think this summer had a significant impact in shaping my interests. One of the interests was in green tea, and the other one was in neurology.

Green Tea

It was the summer my grandparents visited the United States and I haven't seen them in more than 4 years so I was thrilled! While my parents were at work, I spent countless days at home with my grandparents and sister listening to their various stories, playing chinese checkers with my grandparents, going on walks with them, and I soon became accustomed to their lifestyle. During my parent's and my grandparents daily evening coffee/tea, I asked my grandparents if they wanted some too, however they said they only drink green tea. Interesting right? They were faced with various choices: coffee, traditional indian tea, milk, fanta, ginger ale, lemonade, sparkling water, and they chose green tea? Honestly I tried it though, and I believe my grandparents made the best choice. In my mind, green tea does taste the best :)

Neurology

I finished the book "When Breath Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi in one

sitting (By the way, I highly recommend this book I absolutely love it), and was deeply interested of how Paul Kalanithi described his interactions with various people who had neurological problems and questioned the complexity of human life due to the brain as he pursued his studies to become a neurologist. So much happens within the brain and it is always interesting to learn about it and most of the content I consumed, such as the Science Vs podcast on the placebo effect always fascinated me so I hoped to do something in neurology for my junior year research class.

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The rest of Season 1: Junior Year Biotechnology Research

I learned about C. elegans that year and the wonderful model organisms for neurological structures. My team researched, pitched, conducted, and presented research relating to L-theanine's impact on TBI of C. elegans as a preventative treatment. The results were particularly interesting because the groups exposed to L-theanine generally had negative impacts on the C. elegans rather than positive impacts , which rejected my team's initial hypothesis.

Images from left to right: The wonderful team that I worked with and us presenting at the research symposium; A C. elegan under the GFP EVOS microscope. The smaller branched off lines, preresent axons; Those are C. elegans under a normal microscope.

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Season 2, Episode 1: Another New Beginning

I spent the first few months looking at potential causes of the negative impacts of C. elegans and at the beginning, I specifically looked at the dosage we used. As I researched, I came across another article that used L-theanine for C. elegans in oxidative stress and used that source used a dosage of 100 microliter Molar. However, as I read into that same article, I figured out, their results showed positive effects because of the post-stress treatment and added time for recovery, so I decided to make that change for the C. elegans within this project. I also realized another new problem was the method of administration that I used in last year's experiment was the least effective in absorption, so I chose a new method that allowed for better absorption levels called the dead plate method. With the three changes, the administration, dosage and timeline, I drafted a new project and finished my research proposal for Mr. McBride and Ms Dobas to approve. Now I cannot wait to see how the rest of season 2 goes within this research!