Today was my first day at cube.
I learned how to prepare media for culturing fruit flies , and learn basics of how these organism live in the culture.
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What do you mean by medium for fruit flies?
Do they survive on any medium in nature? Why do you prepare medium?
Please describe in detail what does fruit fly need to survive.
Please also tel what study you are planning to do on fruit flies? @Imam
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September 2,2019 .
First day of sept workshop.
Drosophila GRP giving causerie
@Imam mention all your GRP members names and tell us about today’s causerie.
What is drosophila ? Why are you working on drosophila? How is it different from other flies? what’s your long term objective?
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Drosophila group explaining the Voltage Gated Channels in neurons along with @jaikishan sir today at CUBE HBCSE, Mumbai
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How are the voltage gated channels in neurons connected to drosophila? @drishtantmkawale can everyone get a short description about today’s causerie by the drosophila grp …@lydia join the discussion
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So basically as far as I have understood, when the fruity smell of the 
banana reaches the drosophila, some changes in the electrical membrane potential activate the Voltage gated ion channels that alters the conformation or shape/structure of the channel proteins, further regulating their opening and closing. As per google, these are found along the axon and at the synapse.
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How is the smell bringing a change in the electrical membrane potential? What is happening after the opening and closing of channel proteins?
Please share us the reference
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Drosophila group
What we did yesterday (2th Sept):
We studied and came to know the basics of drosophila (fruit fly).
Drosophila is commonly known as fruit fly .
D.melanogaster is one of the species which is widely used for experimental studies.It is because 70% of the genome of D.melanogaster is the same as the of human , it has a short life span, and easily culturable.In 1950 Seymour Benzer cultured Drosophila ,And that generations are preserved from 1950 up till today which are called as CsBz Flies (Canton Special Benzer) or Labrid Flies.
Classification of D.melanogaster.
Kingdom : Animalia
Phylum. : Arthropoda
Class. : Insecta
Order : Diptera
Family. : Drosophiladeae
Genus. : Drosophila
Species. :. Melanogaster.
After that we studied how to trap fruit flies ,ie with a help of a banana /banana peel.
By just trapping fruit fly we cannot make it to survive in that environment t with only the banana peel ,So to make it survive ,we need to make a culture media.The culture media to make a culture of fruitflies contain is Corn Meal Agar media.
- Maize Powder.
- Dextrose
- Sucrose
- Yeast Extract
- Agar
- Orthophosphoric Acid
- Propionic Acid.
How to prepare Single Line Cultured:
To make a single cultured ,we need to have a gravid female ie a pregnant female fruit fly.
And we have to cultured this gravid female separately in a glass bottle with proper media.In these way we can have a single line culture of fruit fly ie they all will be having fruit flies of same species as well as almost same genome.
- Imamuddin Azmi
( FyBsc BT ,KJ somaiya clg)
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Imamuddin Azmi
FY Bsc BT , KJ SOMAIYA CLG
Drosophila group.
Plan of work today :
Media preparation :
We are making 250 ml of corn meal Agar media,to make the media ,we need the following consituents:
- Maize Powder.- 20.75g
- Dextrose. -.12.5. g
- Sucrose. - 6.25. g
- Yeast. - 3.25. g
5)AgarAgar powder - 4.5g
6)Distilled water. - 250ml
Then we have to Autoclave. And after cooling we had to add the following acids.
- Orthophosphoric Acid.- 0.17 ml
- Propionic Acid. - 1ml
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See @Imam whatever you have stated about Drosophila maybe true ,but inorder to prove it is true and not your own hypothesis,you need to provide a good reference paper to it ,more the references more easier and appreciable will be your work.
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Also meantion here what are all these components providing in media? Also mention why are acids put in the media? Won’t they cause any harm to your drosophila?
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@drishtantmkawale as you were there while Nagarjuna sir was explaining what are the things you would tell anyone to give a brief about drosophila melanogaster? How you are going to introduce this model system to the other citizen scientists
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What is the reason for adding this components in the media? Why not make a chocolate media? Why this media? Why to put acid? Details explanation still missing @Imam
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Why can’t drosophila survive in the media which only has banana? Why we need a corn meal media?
Why you need to have a single line culture? What is the role of single line culture? What if I make a mix culture?
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Can we try to trace it back and search for the causality of the fact rather than focusing on the effect of it, so that it will be easy for us to understand what is the role of potential and how all this thing is connected? @Sjuday2527 @drishtantmkawale
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@bivasnag @Sjuday2527 @drishtantmkawale On behalf of @Imam I’ll answer some of the questions asked above…
The components used in corn meal agar medium are:
- Dextrose
- Sucrose
- Maize powder
- Yeast extract powder
- Agar agar powder
- Distilled water
Acids added
- Orthophosphoric acid
- Propionic acid
What could be the reason for using such a media?? 
When we explain this to a common man…how do we tell them that we use such components!!! Everyone wont understand what these components are!!! Also they would think “for culturing such flies…why so many components”
So in simple terms…
Like how human beings require carbohydrates, sugars, proteins, vitamins & minerals in their daily diet…in the same way these flies need them too if we want to culture them!!
So Maize flour is a source of carbohydrates, etc… dextrose is a simple sugar and a source of glucose (energy) for the larvae as its a simple sugar, sucrose a disaccharide for the flies, yeast extract a source of proteins and other nutrients present in it…
Agar is a solidifying agent as we cant culture or keep the flies in a liquid medium…
Why distilled water…for avoiding other ions or any minerals or anything in the water that could cause harm for the flies…seeing to it that we maintain a neutral pH as well…
Acids…orthophosphoric acid has antibacterial property while propionic acid has antifungal property!!!
Media bottles for culturing flies…
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Today ,I am going to trapped fruit flies to culture them in order to study their foraging activity.
Short term objective : To trap fruit flies,
Date : 23 Sept 19,Time(when I kept the bottle): 03:25 pm,
Long term Objective: To study their foraging activity.And to study these ,I am going to trap them by using different fruits at a time in different bottles and observe.
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@Imam what do you mean by studying foraging activity?
why are you trapping flies?
How it will help in it?
What is design of experiment to trap flies?
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Why foraging ? What’s so unique about DROSOPHILAs foraging ? Are you trying to compare foraging between two different species? You can try this with a single line native culture and CsBz flies and can compare both. What’s your thinking on this ?
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