Abstract
Sedatives are a category of drugs that modulates the response of the Central Nervous System, thus slowing the normal brain function. At higher doses it may result in slurred speech, staggering gait; poor judgment; slow, uncertain reflexes. Currently, many sedatives ingested by humans have side effects including depression, aggression and hallucinations. Magnetite, a potential sedative in the domain of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) with little known side effects poses as a possible alternative sedative option. Furthermore, it is cheap and easily obtainable. Hence, this project aims to investigate the efficacy of Magnetite as a sedative using Drosophila melanogaster as a model system. Magnetite was fed to fruit flies in varying doses and its efficacy was assessed based on the flies’ responses in physiological assays, namely phototaxis, smell chemotaxis and taste chemotaxis. Our preliminary study showed that treatment with a dosage as low as 0.01 g/L was capable of dampening the flies’ responses towards light, taste, smell, indicating that Magnetite functions as a sedative. A greater percentage of flies treated with Magnetite failed to respond to light, taste and smell as compared to the untreated flies. 46% of flies treated with Magnetite failed to respond to light stimulus, as compared to the 10% of untreated flies that failed to respond to light; 74% of treated flies failed to respond towards the taste stimulus as compared to the control flies, 35%; and 85% of treated flies failed to respond to smell stimulus while 25% of control flies failed to do so.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our teacher mentors, Dr. Lim Ai Khim and Mr. Chan Sau Siong as well as our lab technician, Ms. Wong whose unwavering support and guidance were valuable to the completion of this project.
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Chen, E.E., Lok, D., Lee, J.C. (2021). Investigating the Efficacy of Magnetite as a Sedative in Drosophila Melanogaster. In: Guo, H., Ren, H., Kim, N. (eds) IRC-SET 2020. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9472-4_1
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