DISCUSSION
Interpretation of Results
There was no significance regarding the number of lesions between any of the treatment groups. Not only was there was no correlation between heat-shock and presence of TBI but also no correlation between vortexing and TBI.
Did Positive and Negative Controls Work?
No
Our negative control should have been zero in order to make valid comparisons.
Because the untreated worms had evidence of TBI it is not possible to deduce whether the TBI present in our positive control worms was induced in the lab or prior.
Yes
We did see DAF-16 translocate into the nucleus after heat shocking which means this positive control worked.
Strengths
We used multiple counters to count lesions on each of the worms. Each counter was blinded to which worms were which so that there was no bias when recording the lesions.
We were able to run the experiment three times (once for practice only, no saved data) to better perform our experiment and get more data.
Limitations
Our negative control worms that were not heat shocked and were vortexed had a large number of lesions recorded however we should have seen that zero lesions were counted for those worms.Â
The worms were also carried around in a box and possibly used by other groups before us. This could’ve caused induced TBI in our control worms.Â
We only had enough time to take pictures of 2-3 worms in each experimental group, this gave us a very small sample size to run statistical tests on.
Improving Our Experiment
Perform experiment but first confirm that experimental worms had no signs of TBI prior to experimentation by assessing neuronal damage beforehand.
Developing new experiments based off our results
Could heat shock help defend against different types of disease other than TBI?
Would we see more resistance to TBI if we cold shocked the worms instead?