so you think you can plant
- Project reviewer
Joined 14 Sep 2018
Project by group gehsbeardsleyfall2018
Info
| Explore | We know that plants grow based on the weather and adapt to the environment around them by regulating water intake and energy usage via their stomata and photosynthesis. Through our research we have also found out that abscisic acid plays a vital role in the growth of these plants, and that... |
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| Research Question | What effects does the frequency of watering and use of abscisic acid have on the leaves lost and length of stem of our different plants? We came up with this because we know that both water and ABA have effects on the growth of plants. This question fits our topic because we know that abscission... |
| Predictions | High water-ABA-wt: Lose substantial leaves, grow moderately High water-no ABA-wt: Lose some leaves, grow substantially High water-ABA-aba1-1: Lose some leaves, grow moderately High water-no ABA-aba1-1: Not lose many leaves, grow substantially High water-ABA-abi1-1: Not lose many leaves, grow... |
| Experimental Design | Our plan is to have three bins with three different water levels: high, medium, and low. Each bin has two pods, one with ABA and one without. And each of these pods has two wt, two abi1-1 and two aba1-1. We will water the high water bin to 400mL 3 times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday), the... |
| Conclusion | What claim can we make from our experiment? What are possible explanations for our results? How do the data we collected and our reasoning with scientific ideas support our claim? What future experiments could be done to expand on the results of this experiment? |
| About this Project |
Updates
As this research project is now in the final stages of wrapping-up, we wish to thank everyone who participated in this inquiry; the students, mentors, teachers and others behind the scenes. We appreciate all of your efforts and contributions to this online learning community.
Scientific exploration is a process of discovery that can be fun! There are many unanswered questions about plants just waiting for new scientists to consider, investigate, and share.
We will be archiving groups and projects on December 17, after which time new posts will not be able to be added. Please come back and visit the PlantingScience Project Gallery anytime to view this project in the future. You can search the Gallery by key word, team name, topic, or school name.
Good bye for now.
Warm regards,
The PlantingScience team
Thanks for sending the poster! It looks great. Very professional layout.
On the graphs, are they showing only the change in stem length or number of leaves on each day, not the total? I am only guessing, but otherwise I can't see how the stem length could go up and then back down. Or like in Fig 5, how can you have a stem length of >10 on day 20, but then go back to 0 on day 22?
Thank you! Yes, the graphs show each day averages, not the total. The extreme changes in stem length and leaves in both “medium water” graphs was the result of death of our plants. We left this in to demonstrate the effects of over stressing our plants with too little water. It was intended to differentiate the wild type from the aba and abi mutants, but unfortunately it effected all plants. This of course would be an aspect of which we would change in the redo of the experiment
Whoops, ignore this one
Thanks for the nice comments! I have enjoyed working with you all. If you make a poster or figures with your results, I would love to see it. :) Hope you are enjoying Thanksgiving!
It’s great to see that teams from your school are wrapping up and posting conclusions. Enjoy the final stages of your project, and feel free to post any final comments or questions you have for your mentors.
Hey Sven, thank you so much for helping us on this arabidopsis journey. I do truly think I can plant now, and although it’s been a lot of work, I can definitely say that I had a radical time. Your input has really shaped our project, and your patience and knowledge have been critical for our success. Thank you so much!
Thank you so much for all of your help and feedback. You have been so responsive and nice. Our project is a lot better because of you.
Hi Sven, thank you so much for all your help throughout our project. Especially with the abscisic acid solution, that was really helpful. Once again thank you so much for all of your help!
Does this tray setup really keep the ABA water from getting into the no ABA tray? Just curious, because I see that both trays have holes and are in the same larger tray.
We sprayed the ABA water directly into the ABA pods outside of the water filled bin and then placed them next to the no ABA plants. Obviously in hindsight we might have separated the bins better in order to eliminate any contamination, but they should still be accurate.
We sprayed the ABA water directly into the ABA pods outside of the water filled bin and then placed them next to the no ABA plants. Obviously in hindsight we might have separated the bins better in order to eliminate any contamination, but they should still be accurate.
Wow, these ones are doing good. The abi1-1 plants look like they are bolting much faster than the others.
Happy Monday! Hope your plants are doing well. Are you starting to see differences between the different genotypes or treatments?
Yes, we have seen a clear difference in growth between plants with ABA and without ABA. Plants with ABA appear to have shorter stems, which makes sense because ABA limits dormancy. We have not noticed much color change in the leaves except for yellowing that has resulted from abscission and leaf loss in the ABA plants, which also seems to fit the predicted outcome.
When you planted the seeds, how did you put them onto the pods? Did you try to get a specific number of seeds per pod? (I know the seeds are super tiny! I used to do a lot of research germinating individual Arabidopsis seeds. I spent hours staring at seeds under a microscope so that I could put them on petri dishes in 10 rows of 10 seeds each per plate.) I was just curious because I noticed that some pods appear to have a lot of seedlings and others have only a few or none.
For the most part we put 3 seeds in each pod. Since we had some left over, we wanted to make the most of them, so for some pods we do have over 3 seeds. Of course we could have just as easily accidentally put one or two more seeds in, and not all of the seeds germinated, which could be a response to the ABA.
Hi! All of our plants except one in the low water tray has died, and then same for medium, but high water is still growing rapidly in most pods. Pictures coming soon.
Oh my! That's so sad. So it sounds like the low and medium water treatments were a bit too low. But the high water treatment must be a good level. You can still use that treatment to test the effects of the different mutants +/- ABA.
You should also think about how you might plant the experiment differently if you did it again. These sorts of things happen a lot in real scientific experiments and then we have to learn what caused this to happen so that we can improve our next experiment. For example, one option would be to increase the low and medium and high. However, perhaps your low, med, and high were ok, but the plants were too young. Maybe they would have survived these treatments if there were a little older? If that were the case, you could try starting will all of them at "high" treatment until they get to a certain stage. Once they are big enough, you change the watering treatment from all high to low, med, high. Think about any other options that you would try if doing this again.
Looking forward to the pictures! Do you see any differences between treatments and/or genotypes (bigger/smaller?, color of leaves?)
Thanks for the photos! Looks like you have some healthy looking Arabidopsis plants. :)