Active Experiments

Repeating Crumley

Experiment Introduction: Steve asked me to try and repeat an experiment by Crumley et al (1950) to get a foothold on D2O effects on living organisms. The jist of the experiment is to grow tobacco seeds in different concentrations of D2O (mixture of D2O and DI water) and chart their germination. There are several iterations of the experiments and they can be seen in detail below:

• RC1and the results. Time-lapse images as well.
• RC2, no live results because of experimental failure (cooling system ruined experiment).
• RC3 and the results.
• RC4 and the results. Time-lapse images as well.
• RC5 and the results. Time-lapse images as well.
• Evaporation experiment to determine the best way to seal the samples.
• DI Water experiment to determine if there is a difference in purity between different DI waters. And the results.

Deuterium depleted water effects on Tobacco Seeds

Introduction: It has been documented that life has developmental difficulty in the presence of high levels of D2O. In spite of this, D2O is found frequently enough in naturally occurring water. Has life developed a need deuterium because of its prevalence?

• DDW1 – first notice of root hair phenomenon.
• DDW2 – failed experiment because of cooling system.
• DDW3 – first appearance of arabidopsis seeds in experiment.
• DDW4 – larger scale experiment of DDW3
• DDW5 – experiment testing differences in water purity using seed germination as a probe

Older Experiments

Shotgun DNA Mapping

Introduction: With the use of optical tweezers, it is possible to map unknown genomic DNA compared to the entire genome no matter what size fragment is being used (almost). This project is on hiatus for now, but that doesn’t mean the information has to disappear.

• The original experimental notebook