Alekha Goldberg
7th Grade, Peak to Peak Mountain Charter School
Pine Mountain Club, CA
Blue-reka! Investigating Methylene Blue as a Neuroprotectant for Traumatic Brain Injury Using a Novel In Vivo Drosophila Model
After her brother suffered from a traumatic brain injury (TBI), Alekha wanted to find ways to protect people from the effects of the injury. She fed methylene blue to fruit flies and found that flies fed methylene blue survived at a higher rate and could climb more after TBI.
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Project Background
During a violent attack while he was walking in Washington, D.C., Alekha’s older brother suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI). “He suffered long-term memory, thinking and brain fatigue issues affecting his work and daily life,” Alekha says. She also learned that 67 percent of veterans have also suffered from TBI. She became especially worried about secondary TBI, effects that can occur after the original trauma. After she learned that the medication methylene blue was neuroprotective, she decided to see if it could help secondary TBI.
Tactics and Results
Alekha started with 350 fruit flies (Drosophila hydei), with one group as a control and four other groups eating methylene blue at 2, 4, 6 and 8 mg/kg for 5 days. She then gave her flies three hits of TBI using a device called a High-Impact Trauma device, which uses a spring to strike vials of flies onto a pad, mimicking a hit like a car accident. Then, Alekha tested her flies’ abilities in a climbing assay, seeing how well they could climb, and how many of them survived the next 24 hours. She showed that flies treated with methylene blue could climb higher after injury, and those getting the highest dose both climbed highest and were most likely to survive for 24 hours.
Beyond the Project
Alekha is from a small town in the middle of Los Padres National Forest, and loves backpacking and hiking with her parents and dog in the High Sierras. “Last summer, I camped with my family and friends where I sold crawdads that I caught daily in the river to neighboring campers (we named the business ‘Rad Dads’),” she says. She is also very interested in history, and last year, was one of the winners of the National History Day Finals competition, working on a project about returning Blue Lake to the Taos Puebloans, who consider it sacred.
