fairfolio
Saved Projects

The Chemical Adaptations of Marine Algae in Stressed Environments

CSEF · 2005 Environmental Engineering

Joanna B. Alday · Silver Creek High School, San Jose

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of my experiment is to identify and contras adapted chemical components of the same species of algae in environmentally different areas. The algae samples were taken from areas that were of stressed/polluted surroundings and areas that were clean and uninhabited. Methods/Materials In order to find the chemical components of the algae a method called Thin Layer Chromatography(TLC) was used. The seven algae samples were massed out equally and chemically extracted with ethyl acetate. After 48 hours the extracted liquid was then transferred into epitubes and spun in a micro-centrifuge. A depth of less than 0.5 Ethyl acetate was poured into a chromatography tank. On a TLC plate a line was carefully drawn 0.5 cm above the bottom. The TLC plate was then spotted 7 times by each individual algae and was then placed in the chromatography tank. Using a program called NIH image processing the TLC plate was analyzed Results Taken from the bay area, 7 algae samples were found in 5 different locations, 3 of which were polluted and 2 were clean. When analyzed the 7 samples contained 19 chemical compounds. Within these 19 chemical compounds 6 compounds were found to be unrelated to any other components. The different components were usually found in areas that were stressed. This signifies that chemical adaptations must have been made by the algae in order to survive in a polluted environment Conclusions/Discussion Thin layer chromatography is just the first step of an expanded experiment. If chemical adaptations were to occur between one species of algae in two environmentally different locations, the change may be substantial enough for the plant to possess medicinal benefits.

Summary statement

In order to identify the chemical adaptations of algae in stressed environments a method called Thin Layer Chromatography is used to analyze each separate components in a sample.

Help received

Mr. Okuda applied destructive spray; Grandfather aided in finding algae

Competition history

  • CSEF 2005 Environmental Engineering · Entry S0801

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google