Category Archives: DDW Effects On Life

DDW2, Open Notebook, RC2, Water Type Effects on Organism Growth

CHTM Cooling System Down

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Since this past Friday (Sept  23, 2011) the cooling system at CHTM has been down. I’m not sure if it is turned off for the impending winter or temporarily broken. This means that right now the lab is a toasty 92F and has been that way all weekend long. Unfortunately this can potentially mean a lot with regards to my seed growth experiments. Now I’m not sure if this is actually the case, but I think with regards to the experiments it may be in the best interest to scrap Try 2 for both the Repeating Crumley and the DDW Effects on Seed Growth until the temperature becomes a bit more stabilized. Now I will still record data and keep track of the experiments, but I will not include these results in any final markups. But that doesn’t mean I can’t learn something from these experiment!

DOI: 10.15200/winn.142721.17155 provided by The Winnower, a DIY scholarly publishing platform

DDW2, Water Type Effects on Organism Growth

DDW Effects on Life Trial 2: Setup

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This is the setup for the second trial of deuterium depleted water effects on plant growth. For the most part the experimental setup is identical to the first trial which you can find here. There are a few notable differences though so let’s run through the prep:

  • 5 seeds of two differing varieties from The Tobacco Seed Company are used in each sample (trial 1 had 3 seeds per sample). I am using Dark Virginia and Virginia Gold #1 variety seeds.
  • there are 5 different water types: 99.9% deuterium depleted water (ddw), deionized water (di water), tap water, 33% deuterium oxide (d2o) mixed with di water, and 33% d2o with ddw. The d2o mixtures are new additions to this experiment.
  • The samples are stored in semi-micro cuvettes and sealed with a silicon top (maybe it’s rubber).
  • The seeds are added to a cuvette and then 2.5ml of a water is added to the sample. This volume minimizes the air bubble in the sample to minimize hydrogen/deuterium exchange with the water.
  • There are 10 samples of seeds and 10 more samples of seeds that are presoaked in their respective water buffers.
  • Seed growth is tracked using a Nikon D40 DSLR with a 10x magnifying lens. The samples are arranged on some Thor Labs optomechanics to make image taking simpler.
DDW2, Water Type Effects on Organism Growth

DDW Effects on Life Try 2: Day 3

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I’m going to shorten this title to DDW Effects 2: Day X and it should be noted that I won’t post every day. Just as things happen. It’s not critical for this experiment that we track growth or time. I’m just noting phenotypical differences in the development, like the hair. I’ll be posting a setup page soon and that will contain all the information pertaining to this project.

This first post is a picture of the seeds and some have already begun to sprout. I didn’t have the abilities to take Day 0 pictures because my station was torn to shreds (I was redesigning a way to easily take pictures of every sample for this and the RC experiment). Now everything is up and running and should proceed smoothly. Here are the pictures:

Some shorthand explanation: the caption format is “seed subspecies, water type”

  • vg – virginia gold; dv – dark virginia
  • ddw – deuterium depleted water; di – deionized water; tap – tap water; d2o – deuterium oxide
  • “33% d2o in xx” means I mixed 33% d2o with xx water (either ddw or di water) by volume. For instance in 3mL of sample, 1mL is d2o and the other 2mL are the water type specified.
DDW1, Water Type Effects on Organism Growth

Videos of the Root Hairs

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Video 1 – (Download by right clicking and selecting save as ~40MB) This is the dark virginia seeds in ddw as viewed from the front of the cuvette.

 

Video 2 – (Download by right clicking and selecting save as ~18MB) This is the dark virginia seeds in ddw as viewed from the side of the cuvette.

 

Video 3 – (Download by right clicking and selecting save as ~25MB) This is the dark virginia seeds in tap water as viewed from the front of the cuvette.

 

Video 4 – (Download by right clicking and selecting save as ~34MB) This is the dark virginia seeds in ddw as viewed from the front of the cuvette, but I’m wiggling the cuvette holder so you can see the motion of the hairs and differentiate them from scratches on the glass.

DDW1, Water Type Effects on Organism Growth

Follow Up on Yesterday’s Final Results of Tobacco Seeds in Water

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Here are all the pictures as promised from yesterdays presults (like that one?). Compare the first picture in the gallery to this one from the last update 15 days ago. Notice the amount of growth in the past 15 days.

While the seeds in ddw have kept growing, it appears the seeds in all other samples have either stopped growing, are growing slower, or are dying. This time most roots did not have hairs or had very little hairs, which is different from last time where the hairs were more obvious. I don’t know what to make of this for now.

I’m also not going to make any conclusions or assumptions in this post or any other observations for that matter. I’ll leave it up to you to think about what’s different and post observations in the comments. The one thing I will say though is that this study is fascinating!

I took some videos of the hairs which I will post in the next post.

DDW1, Water Type Effects on Organism Growth

Final Update on Tobacco Seeds in DDW

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Well oh well. Look at what we have here. I’m so excited I can hardly contain myself…

…ahem.

So it’s been a while since I updated and that’s because I’ve pretty much left the seeds to their own accord. I didn’t want to end the experiment officially because I wanted to see if there would be any other startling results, but it was pretty much over. Now I think I got some startling results. Let’s talk about this:

  • I took pictures of 3 different samples, one dark virginia in ddw, one dark virginia in tap water, and presoaked dark virginia in ddw. The pictures are lit (to see the results) using my new Droid Bionic camera led (for flash) as the lighting source.
  • Two pictures are of the same sample. One is very well lit and the other is dark, but with some side light (I liked the way it looked artistically so I included it and made it the feature image). In these two images I wanted to illustrate that the seedlings were fully germinated (and probably at max growth submerged in water), but that the root hairs I adoringly refer to as root fro almost have completely filled the solution! What the hell could this mean? I no longer think it is a lack of nutrients. Why? Because this effect is only seen in the samples of ddw. The DI water samples which never had quite as much root fro (but quite a bit) looks to have actually gone into remission, meaning the root fro seems to be getting less.
  • To contrast that I showed what it is like in a typical sample of tap water. Note that there is root fro in there (the plant on the bottom has its hairs visible) but they are nowhere near filling the sample. Crazy!
  • To make matters even more crazy, the presoaked seeds in ddw haven’t even germinated properly and there are (is?) root fro everywhere! Both presoaked samples are like this. On top of that it looks like presoaking may have hindered or impaired the germination process because every sample’s growth is stunted. The root fro amounts per sample is typical though (meaning ddw has the most, di water next most, and tap water the least amount of fro).

Holy moley! I don’t even know what to make of this. I’m going to re-setup this experiment in a few days but include D2O (like 33% and 66% amounts) to see if the root hairs are a similar phenomenon and to what extent.

All I can say is someone get me a molecular comb!

tardigrade1, Water Type Effects on Organism Growth

No Tardigrades in the Lightning Field

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No tardigrades at the lightning field…

Well I’m not sure if that is true, but I couldn’t find any tardigrade habitats. The landscape of the Lightning Field was mostly plain (as in prairie, not ordinary). There was almost no tree or rock where I’m used to seen moss and lichen grow. It had been raining frequently so it was muddy, but I’m not in the business of bringing back dirt (and I don’t think my girlfriend would appreciate that too much either). Oh well for that…

tardigrade1, Water Type Effects on Organism Growth

Tardigrades in Quemado

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After deciding to get some lichen and moss samples for tardigrade acquisition here in ABQ (at the Rio Grande) I decided to continue my efforts near The Lightning Field near Quemado, NM which I will be visiting for the next 24 hours. Now I have no idea what the terrain and conditions will be, but I feel like there is some chance I can find what I need.

In any case I’m going prepared. I’ve brought a few petri dishes, a razor blade (for removing samples from the wild), some latex gloves (for sterility and protection), and rubber bands (to keep the petri dishes closed). Hopefully I come back with something.

Map of Quemado, NM (You may need to zoom out)

Featured image courtesy of Wikipedia.

tardigrade1, Water Type Effects on Organism Growth

Field Trip: The Search for Tardigrades!

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Tomorrow I plan on searching the Rio Grande Valley for Tardigrades. I found a paper yesterday by Clark W. Beasley that documents found species here in New Mexico at various altitudes. From what I read it seems like there are plenty in the ABQ altitude range and hopefully I have no problem locating them.

This is no easy feat when you consider that they are microscopic, but I have a secret. I know where they live. Apparently they like to hide out in moss and lichen so I want to collect a bunch of samples to see if I can spring them loose. There are some methods in the paper linked above that describe how to go about extraction. According to their methods, you moisten the moss/lichen for a while and then shake vigorously (I’m not joking!). After that you need to use a micropipette, for extraction and preparation for sample analysis. I don’t think I care about that and will instead focus on just bathing them in D2O from that point on.

I’m planning on collecting a bunch of samples and will probably walk along the Rio Grande Bike Trail (I figure the best chance of moss and lichen is near the only water source in ABQ) extracting samples. Of course I’m winging this, but it should be a fun adventure to say the least.

Here is the map for the access points I will most likely take:

Access Points Map  If you click the link you can go to actual Google Maps and in the options select bicycling and it will show you the bike paths in ABQ. The dark green path near the access points that follows the Rio Grande is where I’ll be.

 

DDW1, Water Type Effects on Organism Growth

Another Update on the Tobacco Seeds

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I was going to use this space to compare the two different lenses, but I was so enthralled with the quality of the one 10x lens (from Opteka) that I ended up just taking a bunch of pictures with the one lens and thought I would share it all with you.

I tried to do some reading on the subject over the weekend, but it appears there is a term called root hairs that appear during growth of the primary root (which is what the radicle turns into). Now the books I read were limited in their germination physiology but at least I now have a foothold.

I did note while taking the pictures that in every case, the DDW seeds had the most root ‘fro, then the DI water seeds, and then the tap water seeds had the least. I still think this is a product of lack of nutrients, but there may be something in the question “Why would the root fro be more prominent in deuterium depleted water than in deionized water?” They are both pure, but maybe ddw is more pure than di water? Something to investigate I think.

I encourage you to enlarge every picture up there and see the amazing resolution one attains with the Nikon D40.