Saumik Das
Class of 2024Ashburn, VA
About
Hello! My name is Saumik Das and my Polygence project is on behavioral neuroscience. The goal of my project is to improve social interaction and abnormal behavioral changes among offsprings of fruit flies mimicking “preterm” birth defects. I’m interested in this area of research since behavioral neuroscience piques my curiosity. Moreover, I was born at 26 weeks (premature) and had to go through speech therapy to improve my social interactions at a young age. Neonates still experience such complications. Socioemotional development is the key topic of my research. After my project is complete, I would like to publish my work in reputed journals.Projects
- " Investigation of the role of Gelsemium sempervirens extract in improving social interaction of a traumatic injury induced Drosophila melanogaster offspring model" with mentor Oscar (Aug. 28, 2023)
Project Portfolio
Investigation of the role of Gelsemium sempervirens extract in improving social interaction of a traumatic injury induced Drosophila melanogaster offspring model
Started Oct. 19, 2022
Abstract or project description
Preterm birth causes problems in social interaction, anxiety, or timidness among fruit fly offspring and there are no treatments for this. Every year around 15 million babies are born premature. Human premature babies known as neonates can experience birth defects like reduced social interaction or increased anxiety (Chauhan & Chauhan, 2019). The organism Drosophila melanogaster (commonly known as the fruit fly) has been used to model humans as they have been known to mimic the effects of depression, anxiety, timidness, and agoraphobia. In the study of the effects of traumatic injury on the Drosophila melanogaster model for maternal fruit flies, it was found that offsprings of these traumatic injury-induced flies had reduced social interaction and were mimicking preterm birth defects (Chauhan & Chauhan, 2019). The method utilized to induce traumatic injury consisted of building a High Impact trauma device or HIT device (Katzenberger et al., 2013; Chauhan & Chauhan, 2019). In the study of high dilutions of the Gelsemium sempervirens (GS) extract on mice models, it was concluded that high dilutions (9th centesimal dilutions) of the GS extract result in decreased anxiety levels and anti-stress hormones are increased (Bellavite et al., 2018). This allows for the Gelsemium sempervirens to be used among fruit flies as it can help counteract decreased anxiety levels and combat painful neuropathies in rat models (Bellavite et al., 2018; Vitet et al., 2018).