The Effect of Amyloid Beta on Symptoms Caused by Traumatic Brain Injury in Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the cause of one third of all injury-related deaths in the United States alone, and approximately 1.7 million people sustain a TBI each year. Depending on the severity of the, a TBI could lead to sustained damage to cognitive and locomotive abilities. Treatments for TBI have been previously investigated; however, prior research does not include the investigation of amyloid beta protein (Aβ), a protein found to accumulate rapidly after TBI, as having a role in recovery from TBI. This experiment focused on studying the effect of the presence of Aβ on cognitive and locomotor ability in Drosophila melanogaster after TBI. The cognitive and locomotor skills of D. melanogaster were tested through the means of a food-based choice assay and a climbing assay respectively. After data collection, Mann Whitney statistical tests were done between D. melanogaster groups to determine the significance of the results. From the statistical analysis of the results, the following was derived: the presence of Aβ is related to improved locomotion in D. melanogaster after TBI according to a significant difference in assay success rates between D. melanogaster with and without Aβ (p-value < 0.0001), however there was no demonstrated relation between Aβ and improved cognition (p-value = 0.0663). Therefore, the hypothesis regarding the possible neural repair properties of Aβ is partially supported. It can be concluded that while Aβ had no effect on cognition in D. melanogaster after TBI, its presence is directly related to the improvement of locomotion.