Population growth of Tetrahymena thermophila under various FeCl3 concentrations in SSP medium

Abstract

The growth of Tetrahymena depends heavily on the iron concentration present in the growth medium. The objective of this study was to further examine how Tetrahymena thermophila respond to an increase in iron concentration in the growth medium. T. thermophila cells were suspended in SSP growth mediums with three varying concentrations of FeCl3 that were prepared (0.024 μM FeCl3, 0.072 μM FeCl3, and 0.14 μM FeCl3) while all other components remained constant. The cells were counted at increments of 3 hours, 5 times, over 24 hours using a haemocytometer. The results showed that T. thermophila inherited the same pattern of growth, starting off slow and resulting in significant growth at the 24 hour mark in all treatments. However, the 0.14 μM FeCl3 medium showed the most significant growth while the 0.072 μM FeCl3 medium showed the least growth. Further analysis resulted in failure to reject the null hypothesis as the errors were substantial and the confidence intervals overlapped significantly. Further studies must be performed in order to establish a correlation between varying iron concentrations and abundance of T. thermophila.