Did you already perform the climbing assay either during a school lesson or on a recent science fair? It is a simple experiment in which a group of old and young flies are tapped down in a vial and are given a defined time (15 s) to climb back up. For each group you have determined how far the ten individuals in each vial have come on a scale from 0 to 10. On this page and its daughter pages you can get more information about this experiment and its uses for ageing and neurodegeneration research:
- How is the experiment done and how can it be used in schools? Please, find further information here.
- What is it about? This experiment is used for research on ageing and neurodegenerative diseases. Please, find some background information about these topics and conditions here.
- What do all these words mean? Researchers use often words that mean little to the lay person. Please, find some definitions of such words regarding the brain, ageing and neurodegeneration here. Tip: the definitions site will open in a new tab; just drag it out of the browser into a separate window, displayed on screen in parallel whilst reading the next pages.
- How can flies help with research on ageing and neurodegenerative diseases? Find important explanations and examples how the fly has helped already here.
- How is it analysed? The analysis of the climbing assay requires data description and statistics. Please, find a crash course in statistics here.
authors: Kirsten Anderson (final year project student) and Andreas Prokop (FLS)
