Date of Submission

Fall 2019

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Biology

Project Advisor 1

Brooke Jude

Project Advisor 2

Michael Tibbets

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Caffeine has been proven to raise levels of physiological activity in the brain and central nervous system. A high intake of caffeine may lead to adverse effects on the human body and brain as it can disrupt sleep, high blood pressure and cause muscle tremors in humans. Caffeine can also affect non-mammalian vertebrates such as zebrafish (Danio rerio) by causing muscular toxicity. Zebrafish was selected as the animal model for this experiment due to its unique combination of complexity, simplicity, translational relevance and applicability to high throughput behavioral drug screens. High quantities of caffeine have been shown to cause neural tube closure defect, jittery, touch insensitivity, and growth retardation as well as a drastic coiled body phenotype in zebrafish. Understanding caffeine exhibited in zebrafish embryos is necessary in order to explore potential treatments that can help identify drugs that protect the neuron as well as to further research in caffeine toxicity. In this current study, we aimed to replicate a study that uses embryos treated with high levels of caffeine, looking mainly for growth retardation. Results demonstrated that the higher the caffeine’s concentration, the higher the levels of growth retardation by diminishing the zebrafish’s body length. Results also showed that the higher the caffeine’s level of concentration, the higher the mortality rate. These behavioral and morphological phenotypes provide a tool for drug discovery.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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