User:R. Morgan Taylor/Notebook/Biology 210 at AU
2/23/15 Zebrafish Observations Day 4 Procedure: Observed the control and test groups under the dissection scope. Removed 10 ml of water/retinoic acid from each of the petri dishes. Then removed the egg sacks and fungus from the dish. Put 25ml of water/retinoic acid back into the dishes, and put them back into the bin.
Observations:
Control-All 20 embryos are still accounted for and alive, 0 dead. The zebrafish can now swim, and it appears that their tails have formed correctly. There are not notable deformities. The tail and eyes are black, but the erst is translucent in color. The fish can swim quickly. There is no notable deformities to the eyes. Normal pigmentation. Could not detect a heartbeat. According to staging, they look fully developed.
Test-All 20 fish are still alive. The Zebrafish can swim, but they struggle to do so. They attempt to swim but cannot move very far or very fast. A few of the Zebrafish have tails that are slightly curved at the end, others do not, but still none of the fish are able to move at the same speed as the control group. The eyes appear to have normal pigmentation, but the rest of the fishes pigmentation is odd--they are black on the inside for the eyes and tail, but instead of being translucent on the outside, the fish appear to be yellow. This is a notable difference from the control group. Picture of Test group attached below
-RMT
2/20/15 Zebrafish Observations Day 3 Procedure: Observed the control and test groups under a dissection scope. Checked developmental progress and cleanliness of the petri dish. After observing, petri dishes were placed into a bin with a wet paper towel at the bottom as to prevent evaporation.
Observations:
Control- All 20 embryos are still alive. The embryos are still translucent in color, but the inside is black (normal pigmentation). The tail and the eyes are forming, and are black. No signs of deformities. There is no evidence of motion yet. They are roughly .9mm in length (according to staging diagram used in lab). The head has migrated away from the chest. No visible heartbeat yet. Removed 2 fungal growths from the petri dish.
Test- All 20 embryos are still alive. There are no notable distinctions between the control and the test groups. They are all roughly .9mm in length (according to the staging diagram used in lab). The head has migrated away from the chest. The eyes and tail are developing and are black. There is normal pigmentation. No signs of mobility and no visible heartbeat. The tail has not shown signs of developmental deformity, neither has the brain.
2/18/15 Zebrafish Day 1 Procedure: Set up a control group with 20ml of deerpark water in a covered petri dish. Set up a test group with 20ml of retinoic acid in a covered petri dish. After this, 20 healthy and transluscent embryos were selected for each dish. The eggs were transfered to the petri dish using a pipette. The tops of the dishes were taped to the bottom and placed onto a tray to sit.
-RMT
Observations:
Control- All 20 embryos are alive. They are all transluscent in color. There is no movement yet. When you look at the embryo, you can see a yolk in the center, but not much else. No eyes or tail have formed. Picture of Control embryos below.
Test-All 20 embryos are alive. The color is translucent. There is no movement yet. When you look at the embryo, you can see the yolk in the center, but not much else. No eyes or tails have formed. No apparent differences between the test and control embryos yet.
Hypothesis: Zebrafish exposed to retinoic acid will have higher incidence of malformations in the tail and nervous system.
Prediction: If Zebrafish are exposed to retinoic acid, then they will show higher incidence of malformities than the Zebrafish in the control group.
-RMT
2/17/15 Lab 5:Inverterbrates 1)THe Planaria moves forwards slowly sort of like a slug would. It glides and crawls. Planaria is a acoelomate, meaning that its simple digestive system doesn't have a coelom; this form effects the function of the invertebrates. It's simple structure is reflected in its movement because it moves very slowly, and lacks the ability to make sharp turns or go quickly. Invertebrates with a pseudocoelomate structure have an incompletely lined body cavity, and Nematodes are an example of this. The nematodes move by sliding back and forth, a wriggling motion. The coelomate Annelida moves by contracting muscles causing the head to extend forwards. The Annedlida phyla have a fully lined fluid-filled coelomate, and the internal organs are placed in a way rhat they arent harmed with movement. It appears as though the contracting muscles do not allow the annelid to move backwards.
The size range of organisms observed ranges from .8mm to 2mm. The largest organism measured was the beetle larvae, and the smallest organism measured was the soil mites. The most common organism found in the leaf litter was the soil mites while the least common found were springtail.
3) 5 Vertebrates that could be found in this transect:
The Hawk and the Raccoon would be at the top of the food web. The Hawk and the Raccoon would both depend on smaller animals as a source of food, and possibly some plants. The Hawk would need access to a tree for nesting, similarly to the robin. The raccoon would live in a den, so they would need to have a shelter of rocks, trees, or bushes available to them so that they could be safe. The robin would depend on small creatures such as worms or grasshoppers for food, and at the same time, the robin could be a perfect meal for a Hawk. The robin would need to be around trees as well, preferably away from predators as to keep hatching eggs safe. The squirrel and mouse would both be sources of food for the raccoon and the hawk, and in addition, the mouse would be food for the robin. The mouse and squirrel would need areas to live, such as in a tree (squirrel) or in a small den, similarly to the raccoons for the mouse. All of these animals would need to have access to water in order to survive. Bacteria and archaea would benefit all the species, because they would feed small invertebrates such as annelids that would in turn feed the squirrels and robins, and so on. Important factors could be dead leaves and grass, because the dead leaves and grass are primary producers, meaning they are the original source of the energy. Bacteria and archaea could feed on the dead leaves, while mice could feed on the grass.
2/10/15 Lab 4:Plantae and Fungi
1)Within the transect we found five different plants, although this was difficult becasue there arent many plants within our transect, and many of the plants appear to be of the same species.The plants that we found are listed in the table below.
2)There are no flowering plants in our transect.
3)The Fungi Sporangia have hyphae that grow upward, forming small dark globelike structures. Sporangia contain cells that are called spores, and these spores are released into the air when the sporangia open up. Sporangia are very important for reproduction of fungi. -RMT
2/3/15 Lab 3: Identifying and Studying Bacteria
Pre Procedure questions/observations: 1)I dont think that there will be any Archaea growing on the agar plates. This is because archaea tend to grow in extreme conditions, and the agar plate is not an extreme condition. 2)The Hay Infusion Culture smells even worse this week than it did last week, with a rotten decaying smell. The crusted top that we broke last week to take samples from the bottom has reformed and looks even thicker than it had previously. The water appears to be a darker brown than it was last week, as it is almost black in color; the plant matter in the middle is hardly visible. Hypothesis: The smell and coloration of the Hay infusion changes from week to week as more organisms begin to grow in the Hay Infusion.
Procedure 1: Table 1 100-fold Serial Dilutions Results
Procedure 2:Antibiotic Resistance 1)Most of the plates that have the antibiotics have no colonies growing in them. With the exception of the Nutrient+Tet dilation 10^-9 tray, the agar plates with tet have no growth. The plates without antibiotic have lots of visible colonies growing on them.This indicates that the bacteria on the tet plates that grew is naturally resistant to the antibiotic, while the plates with no growth were not. The plates without the antibiotic have growth because there was no tet introduced. Overall, the Tet decreased the amount of bacteria on each plate. Oddly, the tet plate with growth did not even show a diminished amount of growth, suggesting that the antibiotic did not effect that strain of bacteria at all. There was fungi on the tet plate with bacteria, which makes sense because an antibiotic would not wipe out a fungi; an anti-fungal would do that. Only one species of bacteria remains resistant to the antibiotic. 2) The mode of action for the antibiotic Tetracycline is to inhibit the protein synthesis in bacteria by preventing aminoacyl-tRNA from associating with the ribosome(Chopra and Roberts 2001.) Tetracycline is used on a variety of bacteria including gram positive and negative bacteria.
Procedure 3: Table 2 Bacteria Characterization
-RMT
Citations: Chopra, I., & Roberts, M. (2001, June 1). Tetracycline Antibiotics: Mode of Action, Applications, Molecular Biology, and Epidemiology of Bacterial Resistance. Retrieved February 3, 2015, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC99026/ ;
1/29/15 Lab 2: Hay Infusion Culture Observations
Procedure 2: 1)The Hay infusion from the Wildlife Sanctuary has a rotten smell. On the top of the sanctuary there appears to be some mold. For microscopic observation, we took samples from two different locations, from the top near the pant matter and from the bottom. Organisms that are near the plant matter may differ from those that live away from the plant matter because they may feed on different organisms or have different mechanisms, such as being photosynthetic or not. We were only able to locate 4 organisms from our samples, 3 from the top of the hay infusion and 1 from the bottom. On the top, we found Paramecium Caudatum, Colpidum and Volvox. The Paramecium Caudatum is about 230 micrometers in length and is motile (cilia.) The paramecium does not appear to be photosynthesizing, especially with the lack of light that is making its way into the infusion. It is a paramecium. The Colpidum is 55 micrometers, and is motile (cilia.) It does not appear to be photosynthesizing, and it is a protozoa. The Volvox is about 400 micrometers. The Volvox is photosynthetic and is an algae. The volvox is motile and moves with a flagella. The only organism that we could find in the bottom of the Hay infusion was Colpidum, which we also found in the top of the Hay Infusion. There is little light reaching the bottom, and a very foul smell with thick waters so there may not be much life in the bottom.
2)The Volvox is a species that meets all the needs of life. The needs of life are as follows: They can aquire and use energy, they are made up of more than one cell, they are able to process information, they are capable of replication, and they are a product of evolution (Freeman.) The volvox is a type of green algae, meaning that it aquires and uses energy through the means of photosynthesis. They are chloroplast containing. Each volvox is made up of 6000 individual cells on average, so it meets that criteria. Since the volvox is algae, and algae are eukaryotic that means that Volvox have nuclei, meaning that they are able to process information. Volvox can reproduce through asexual or sexual reproduction. Eventually, daughter colonies will break off of the parent colonies and form a new colony (Koufopanou.) Finally, the volvox comes from the the volvocine, which was examined earlier in lab. The volvocine line begins with the isogamous unicellular alga called Chlamydomonas, and eventually evolves into the volvox, which is the peak of evolution for this particular line (Bentley et al.) If the Hay infusion culture continued to grow for two months, I think there would be a decrease in life because of the lack of sunlight getting into the infusion. Species such as the volvox are photosynthetic,and thus wont be able to live long without access to sunlight. Sunlight would be the main selective pressure for my sample, although other prey and may be a selective pressure as well. Citations: Bentley, M., Laslo, M., Walters-Conte, K., & K. Zeller, N. (2014). Biological Life at AU. In A Laboratory Manual to accompany: General Biology 2 (1st ed., Vol. 1, pp. 14-16). Washington, D.C: Department of Biology American University. Freeman, S. (n.d.). Biology and the tree of life. In Biological science (Fifth ed., p. 2). Koufopanou, V. 1994. The evolution of soma in the Volvocales. Am. Nat. 143:907–31.
-RMT
1/25/15 Lab 1:Hay Infusion and Transect
The Wildlife sanctuary is located between two sidewalks. The transect is primarily made up of soil and leafy bushes.In the center of the transect is a tree which is bare, and there are dead leaves on the ground. The soil is quite bare besides the dead leaves and a bit of snow. There is a wooden bench in the transect that seems to have been scraped at by an animal. It does not seem as though there is much foot traffic through the transect, so it is not very disturbed. It seems as though the wind has blown a few wrappers into the transect. Biotic factors within the transect are the tree, moss, small leafy bushes, grass and tall grassy bushes. The abiotic factors are rocks, soil, mulch,snow, wind and litter.
-RMT
1/25/15 This is Morgan Taylor, I've successfully submitted to OWW! -RMT
