CHSU Discovery

Abstract: 
Epilepsy is the most common chronic brain disease, and there are 50 million people worldwide who have epilepsy. There is no cure, and the current anticonvulsants are not universally effective. Additional studies are needed to produce better and more effective treatments. Drosophila melanogaster provides an excellent model and tool to study epilepsy due to the low cost of maintenance, simplicity, and flexibility of their genetic makeup, and rapid reproduction time. They are also able to exhibit complex behaviors similar to humans, such as learning and memory. This study aims to induce acute seizures to test the persistence of a DNA Topoisomerase I inhibitor drug and monitor locomotion, learning, and memory. The use of a negative geotaxis assay, which focuses on the climbing behavior of D. melanogaster, allows the characterization of changes in locomotion after a recovery period from the seizure and drug feeding. With this, we found that the use of a DNA Topoisomerase I inhibitor reduces seizure sensitivity in Drosophila as they had quicker recovery periods from seizures based on their climbing behaviors. The significant findings from this research will contribute to improving therapeutics for epilepsy by demonstrating that the inhibitor drug could play a role in helping improve post-seizure behavior.