Our package arrived about a week ago, but we haven’t touched it till today due to various reasons.
One, none of the research members cared enough to take the fruit flies with them when the package came. Next day, I (Sim Ho) was told that they all died because we didn’t take it home quick enough by our class teacher. He said that fruit flies don’t live long, and that I should’ve conducted the experiments on that day. While my knowledge about fruit flies begged to differ, I wasn’t happy to hear the result nonetheless. I felt that there was no need for a team if nobody was willing to help out, so I disbanded our group without a word, and looked for other cheaper things to research, as I have used up most of the funds I was given.
I left the package next to the trash can of our class just in case I might have an idea for dead fruit flies, like, studying the rate of muscle decay or something. Then one day, our teacher opened up the box, finding the fruit flies alive! I’m assuming that anesthetic was used to put them to sleep for a long while so that they won’t be harmed during transportation. And this is where the second reason comes in. I didn’t feel prepared, so I left them for a day or two as self-breeding as an excuse.
The styrofoam box contained 4 mutated fruit flies and 1 wild type, 6 bottles each. The mutated are as the following: Brown Eyed, White Eyed, Yellow Body, and Bent Wing. My class teacher forgot to order Antennapedia mutation, one with extra legs on where there should be antennas.
Along with the box came 5 bottles of Dimethyl ether: our anesthetic. I didn’t my club teacher would order this many.
My objective today was to make all possible mixes of fruit flies. In each test tubes that I didn’t prepare, I needed to put just a male and a female in it. All I knew about the difference between a male and a female is that male fruit flies have considerably smaller abdomen than female ones. And that was it.
To be completely honest, I wasn’t fully prepared. I didn’t think it would be hard, or rather impossible, to find the appropriate amount of ether for fruit flies on the internet. Because obviously, I knew too much would kill them. After minutes of searching, I decided to judge the appropriate amount on my own. I also didn’t plan how to anesthetize them. But thanks to my quick thinking, I poured a drop of ether on to the foam cap, and let it diffuse into the tube.
As I laid down the anesthetized fruit flies, I found that I couldn’t tell by just looking. I had to compare other characteristics of each sex: the lines on their abdomen, or their sex organs. Thankfully, my club teacher noticed this and immediately lent me a microscope. At this point, I realized how long it will take me to see the difference between fruit flies, and how long this entire thing would take.
This is where Song Tae Hee came to help. He insisted on helping me, and requested to be part of my (non-existent) team. Park Sae Young was also added to help me complete my objective quicker.
We three sat on our tables, each with a microscope, embedding forceps, and a tube of fruit flies, trying to separate male and female fruit flies.
This is Tae Hee washing a tube that he selected out of the 30 tubes we have. Rest in peace, disposed fruit flies/soon to be fruit flies.
After around 4 to 5 hours of work, we finally finished them. Because of our unbalanced doses of ether, some woke up as early as we wanted, and some stayed asleep too long for us to think they were alive at first. Some never woke up. Some of the tubes had food (we left some of the tubes uncleaned, because they were visibly empty of other fruit flies and maggots. We cleaned up the ones we weren’t sure), but the worry was on the ones that don’t. I knew that fruit flies could live at least for 12 hours without food, so we plan to give them rotting fruit by tomorrow morning.
Whatever other problems we have, we will deal with them on the next day. We are done for today.