What is an example of a challenge that you had to overcome during this research project? One big challenge was figuring out how to connect the fly’s regional digestive programs to human biology. To get past this, we had to learn how to run principal component analysis (PCA) and use DESeq2 software, which was tough at first but ultimately helped us isolate the specific transcriptional programs in the posterior midgut.
What is one thing you learned from this project that you can take forward in your future work? How do you see it being helpful in your chosen field? I learned how to map fly genes to their human equivalents using an orthology analysis tools. Seeing how this digestive biology has been conserved across roughly 600 ~ 700 million years of evolution was amazing, and it gave me a really solid hands-on foundation in molecular biology for my future classes and research.