Folic acid proposal

Analysis of Folic Acid Metabolism and its Effect on Neural Tube Defects in Zebrafish
Folic acid is a naturally occurring vitamin whose absence during the first weeks of pregnancy has been linked toneural tube defects (NTD) in human babies. The cause of NTDs is not known. While there is sufficient statistical data to support that folic acid reduces the likelihood of NTDs, its preventive rolein NTDs is not known. This project will help understand folic acid’s preventive role in developing embryos regarding NTDs, specifically what concentrations of NTDs should be used to minimize theincident of this defect; it will also shed light on the toxic effects of folic acid on developing embryos. With this topic successfully addressed more effective preventive methods, detailing folic aciddosages, can be developed and implemented in developing babies.
This research will create a link between folic acid concentrations and incident of NTDs in developing zebrafish. Mutant strain zebra fishembryos with neural tube defects will be tested at different concentrations of folic acid, the number of zebrafish at each concentration that develop NTDs will be recorded, and the survival rate ateach concentration will be recorded. It is hypothesized that the higher the concentration of folic acid, the lower the incident of NTDs will be, until a threshold concentration of folic acid isreached, which will be toxic, and thus kill the embryos. The experiments will be conducted on several groups of zebrafish, each tested at different concentrations of folic acid. Morphological assays of eachgroup’s neural structure will be conducted regularly along with a series of behavioral assays towards the end of the experiment. Abnormalities are to be identified throughout these assays. It is knownthat folic acid prevents NTDs, the best possible concentrations at which it does this are however not known, as are toxic folic acid concentrations, the results of this experiment will provide a...