fairfolio
Saved Projects

The Effects of Caffeine on Glycine max (Soybean) Proteogenomics

ISEF · 2024 Plant Sciences

Abuelem, Jana · Pulaski Academy

Is this your project?

Overview

Glycine max holds significant global agricultural and economic values. Although caffeine is used as a soil fertilizer, it could inflict adverse effects on the seed, hindering the plant’s overall growth. This study evaluated the effects of caffeine on Glycine max radicle morphology and proteogenomics. We hypothesized that if Glycine max seeds are exposed to higher caffeine concentrations, their protein and DNA levels should increase as a result of greater stress on the seed itself. An experimental design was used to split 360 seeds into four groups, each irrigated with caffeine solutions of 0 (control), 0.2, 0.4, or 0.8 mg/ml. After nine days, germinated seeds were studied morphologically and proteogenomically. Morphological analysis revealed a significant difference in water content across caffeine concentrations (p-value = 0.0049), and that radicle color is dependent on caffeine concentration (p-value < 0.0001), suggesting altered photosynthesis. Protein extraction and SDS-PAGE displayed a significant difference in the protein concentration (p-value < 0.0001) and protein levels (p-value < 0.0001) across the caffeine-concentration groups. DNA extraction further revealed a significant increase in DNA concentration in the highest caffeine-concentration group compared to the others (p-value < 0.0001), suggesting higher transcription upon exposure to higher caffeine concentrations. The qPCR showed a significant increase in the expression of Momilactone-A Synthase-like (stress) enzyme gene in the 0.2 caffeine-concentration group (p-value <0.001) compared to the control. Taken together, these results suggest that caffeine stresses Glycine max seeds, potentially due to increased levels of apoptotic proteins upon exposure to caffeine.

Working on something like this? See what's been done and what's still open.

Competition history

Resources

Related projects

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

Browse more like this

Report a problem

Source: Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair

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