Channelrhodopsin-2 is a light-receptive protein often used in the field of optogenetics. When inserted into an organism's motor neurons, ChR? stimulation using 470-nm LED light causes aetivation of such neurons and a paralytic response, thus giving the researcher control of an organism's peripheral nervous system. Such optogenetic inquiries can also provide an interesting way to study associative learning specilically within Drosophila melanogaster and could potentially offer a novel approach in teaching organismis in the future. This project attempted to quantify the variance in phototaxis between wild type D. melanogaster larvae and those modified with Channelrhodopsin-2 protein. There were three experimental groups used: wild type organisms, both those that received the LED stimulation and those that did not, and transgenic organisms who received LED stimulation to determine if the mutation and stimulation in tandem vould change phototaxis hehavior, LED stimulation was achieved via the application of a directed LED beam to the larvae in the form of three one minute intervals punctuated by two five minute breaks. Phototaxis was quantified by placing a lined and moistened petri dish under a checkerboard pattern produced by a standard overhead projector, with the number of larvae in each quadrant of the checkerboard recorded in thirty-second intervals for a total of live minutes. The wild type groups cach had 5 replicates for a total of 10 wild type groups, the mutant group. 10. Data were analyzed using a linear regression t-test. Since all probability values were signilicantly greater than 0.05. I can reasonably conclude that my LED stimulation protocol and the presence of ChR2 in motor neurons had no cficct on phototaxis in the organisms I studied, therefore my liypothesis was incorrect. Some reasonable explanations for this include an inability for associative learning or LED stimulation either too short or 100 weak for significant results. Further studies may include increasing the intensity and duration of LED stimulation or the usage of other organisms to study the association of the unfavorable neural stimulation with a given stimulus.