Impact of Vitamins on Planarian Regeneration

Overview

Objectives/Goals For my science project I want to answer the question, #What are the affects of vitamins A, B, and C on the asexual reproductive rate of land planarians?# The original hypothesis is that vitamin A will help the planarians to regenerate because it is essential for growth and reproduction. Vitamins B and C are not expected to help or hurt the specimens because planarians do not have cartilage or blood. Methods/Materials For this experiment the worms were divided into four groups and then cut in half. Vitamin A enriched water was added to group A, vitamin B water was added to group B, and vitamin C water was added to group C. The control group had water with no vitamins added. The planarian regeneration progress was monitored daily. Results In this experiment, vitamin A increased the regenerative rate by 11% over the control group. Vitamin B and C both killed the planarians. Conclusions/Discussion This study has helped answer the original question by showing that vitamin A increases the regeneration rate of land planarians. This study does raise the question of why the groups with vitamins B and C died. What vitamins B and C have in common is that both are acids (folic acid and ascorbic acid) and both dissolve in water. In comparison, vitamin A is not water soluble because it is an oil, and therefore it does not change the acidity of the water. It can be inferred that vitamin B and C killed the planarians because they were water soluble acids. If this experiment is repeated a much lower dose of vitamin B should be used, and you should not use vitamin C.

Competition history

• CSEF 2005 Pharmacology/ Toxicology · Entry J1441

Resources

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