I loved listening to everyone’s chalk talks this week, especially because we got to learn much more than just a sentence or two about everyone’s project. The project I decided to reflect on this week was Rebecca’s!
Rebeca’s project focused on the effect of an olfactory gene (or47B) in fruit fly courtship. She explained the behavioral aspects of fruit flies that was interesting and a seemed a little silly. We got to better understand the role of the olfactory genes and the fruitless gene that seems to be tied to courtship which was cool! I found Rebecca’s talk interesting because in my neuroscience class last semester we talked vaguely about olfactory genes and pheromones but didn’t speak much about it since pheromones occur mostly in other animals.
I’m interested to see how the rest of her fruit fly watching goes for the rest of the summer, and if the fruit/or47b mutant will not learn the expected courtship behavior of the fruit fly!
Nice job to everyone with their talks this past week!