| Phycology |
| Finally a page devoted to my work. Contrary to the image along the border of this page, I do not work on plants like one would find potted in their house, maybe in their swimming pool, but not a pot. This palmatly compound plant is actually much bigger than what I study by almost 500 fold. Botany is the study of all plants, and sort of inaccuratly placed in there is Phycology, the study of algae. The reason I say inaccuratly placed under the umbrella of Botany is not all scientists can agree that algae is a plant. For example, what I work on are the microscopic algae. Those are classified under the kingdom Protista, the kingdom of small 'animals'. At the same time though, the large kelp and seaweeds are also algae but those are classified under the kingdom Plantae. So kinda odd. But like I said, I study the microscopic algae. To be more specific, my main work is done with Nannochloris spp. As of right now I am working with various marine, freshwater, and halotolerant (salt tolerant) strains of Nannochloris, testing their responce to salinity stress. As mentioned on the "about me" page, I work under Dr. William (Bill) Henley in the Department of Botany at Oklahoma State University. At this time there are 4 of us besides Dr. Henley working in the lab. There is Nana Annan, our graduate student, Dr. Andrea Kirkwood, our post-Doc, Andy Potter, another undergrad technition, and then myself. Now to add more about my actual project. I have completed two seperate sets of experiments, the first compairing the growth rate under salt stress of the Salt Plains isolate to three marine strains from the University of Texas (UTex 1998, UTex 2055, and UTex 2379). For this experiment, I have 9 flasks for each seperate strain. For the marine species, 3 flasks were the begining salinity, 10ppt (parts per thousand) NaCl (salt), that also can be said that they are 1% salt. 3 of them are 50ppt NaCl (5% NaCl), and the last three are 100ppt NaCl (10% NaCl). The media used from is a liquid media recipie from the University of Texas called AS100 media. The only difference between the seperate medias I make is the percentage of NaCl in the media. Upon transfering my cultures, the absorbance of each culture is measured daily using a Spectrophotometer. The measured absorbance of the culture is then put into an equation that gives me the cell density of the culture. Kinda nice, saves me some time. The ultimate end result is to take the natural log of the cell density, then graph that out to determine a linear regression and standard devation. If the culture is growing ideally, the line formed will be straight. Most of the time though the line is slightly bent. My second experiment compaired the growth rates under salt stress of the Salt Plains isolate to those of four freshwater Nannochloris strains. Due to the number of flasks that this experiment would require, I attempted a different method, which was to use test tubes. Each strain would have three replicates for three salinities, creating again 9 test tubes for each strain. I tested at 0ppt, 50ppt, and 100ppt NaCl. Before innoculating, I began with stock cultures at 0ppt, transfering when the cultures became dense enough. Again I utilized the AS100 media from UTex, varing the salinity according to the recipie. Each test tube was filled with 10mL of media, then innoculated with a calculated amount, hoping to yield similar starting values for every culture. Again each day the measurements were taken for the cultures, graphed and the error and significance determined. This entire experiment is still in VERY preliminary stages, as I hope to continue to vary my methods in hopes to reduce error. Once I get a set of data that I feel actually represent the experiment well, I will post it here. Right now I am trying to find a way to acclimate the freshwater strains to higher salinites, for I feel a large portion of my error came from excessive salinity stress, practically killing the innoculate. I hope to reduce that error by reducing the margin of my salinity stresses, as suggested to me by Andrea. Taking a few of the strains and varying their salinities by incriments of 5ppt or so, maybe with 6 different salinites, creating a large range of data. We shall see as time progresses, but I hope to do this with all of the strains, creating a solid basis of comparisons for all of the Nannochloris strains. |
| Some other things to check out! |