Poop and Drugs: The TRIP Initiative

Two words: Poop and Drugs.

Let me catch you up real quick. My name is Daniel Johnson, and these past few weeks, I’ve been exploring a rising form of treatment for autoimmune diseases: poop transplants. I know, I know, it sounds disgusting, but trust me, transferring bacteria in your poop to another person has a lot of medical potential! For my project, I’ve been comparing a poop transplant to that of the usual steroid treatment in treating inflammatory bowel disease. And I've been using fruit flies to do it!

Creating vials for the flies where they receive treatment for their disease

I used fruit flies as my 'patients', giving them poop transplants and small steroid doses to treat their inflammatory bowel disease. After weeks of work, I found that my ideas had proven correct: the poop transplant was successful in reducing the symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease in the flies. And when combined with the steroid treatment, it was even more effective. There's much more testing ahead before poop transplants can become a more widespread treatment, but in the future? It may one day be a life-changing procedure for many people with inflammatory bowel disease and other autoimmune diseases.

Fly vial prepared for transplant (left) vs Vial prepped for control (right)

But I didn't just wake up one morning with that idea fully formed in my mind. I worked on this project as part of the TRIP Initiative (https://www.tripinitiative.com), a program working to expose dedicated high-schoolers to real laboratory science. Over five weeks, under the direction of Dr. Alyssa Leystra, I learned to work with new lab equipment I'd never seen before, design my own independent research project, and present my findings to an audience. I made some great friends too! I'd highly recommend this program to anyone interested in science (especially in a biology lab), as a chance to have fun, learn new science, and explore something that interests you in a whole new way. I can't wait to see what your projects will look like!

Measuring drugs for flies

Transplant vs Steroid vials

Sorting flies for treatment

Recording fly activity

Project's data and results

Presenting the findings