| Explore | What we know about plants from outside of school is that they are important for taking carbon dioxide and relasese oxygen as a by product. Though we got most of our information about Arabidopsis thaliana from research in class. This information is summarized on the PowerPoint and our rough draft research is uploaded on the document shared as well. Basically what we discovered for our plants we are studying is that the Columbia Arabidopsis is naturally sensitive to salt, and how salt affects the growth of the plants is that it prevents root growth due to slowing the transition of auxin hormone that makes roots grow longer. This causes eventually the root tips to burn due to lack of water they are able to get and thus affecting the overall growth of the plant such as shoot height. The other wild type plant we looked into for comparison was the Landsberg where they are also sensitive to salt, but are mutanted to grow taller shoots. Then we looked into our mutant, which is the Columbia wild type, but has a genetic mutant that increases the sensitivity of salt. The question we thought of when looking into these plants was which genotype could survive in human contaminated soil, as with increase contamated water affects he growth of crops. We want to find out which plant can survive a contamination of high levels of salt in the water. |
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| Research Question | What genotypes for arabidopsis thaliana are more apt to grow in a human contaminated environment? |
| Predictions | The control experiment will grow normally like in the wild without any added salt, the low concentration will stub the growth of the plant and the high concentration could kill the plant. |
| Experimental Design | We plan to test three strains of Arabidopsis thaliana (2 wild types: Colombian and Landsberg erecta, and a mutant strain of the Colombian) on their response in growth to three different concentrations of salt in the water we use to water them. One pot of each strain will be watered with normal water as the control, one pot of each strain will be watered with low saline levels of water, and one pot will be watered with water with a high concentration of salt. We will then test the growth by measuring shoot height, root length, leaf count, and biomass. We will then determine the percent difference for each dependent variable for each strain over the different salt levels. |
| Conclusion | From our data it is shown that the mutant with the salt sensitive genes can not survive in high salt levels nor in low salt levels. We also found the Landsberg and Columbia strains are also extremely effect by salt levels and could not grow in high salt levels. Landsberg and Columbia strains survived in the low salt but did not grow at all. The results can be explained because of the salt sensitive gene that was inserted in the mutant, along with the general salt sensitivity of Arabidopsis thaliana. Our data fits exactly with what other studies have shown, and also proves that the gene does effect growth in salt contaminated environments. Future experiments that could be done could find a gene that is salt tolerant. Also another experiment could find the role that potassium plays in salt sensitivity and if potassium could be used to combat the salt sensitivity. |
| Investigation Theme | ARABIDOPSIS |
| Grade Level | High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12) |
| School Name | Glenbard East High School |
| Session | Fall 2016 |
