The Effect of Copper Sulfate on the Cell Growth of Wild Type CC-­‐1690 Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Abstract

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a unicellular green alga found around the world and intensely studied in biology. Due to the increasing demand in clean alternative energy, studies have been done on Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to optimize its ability to produce hydrogen gas and biofuels (Morowvat et al. 2009). Over the years, industrialization has led to increasing copper contamination in the environment (Jamers et al. 2006). In order to understand the optimal conditions for the growth of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in a lab setting or in the environment, we sought to find out the effect of copper on the abundance of the wild-­‐type form (CC-­‐1690). Three treatments were used in our experiment: 0.0 mg/L [control], 0.6 mg/L and 1.2 mg/L of copper sulfate. For each treatment four replicates were setup and cell density measurements were taken through a 168 hour (7 day) time span. The results of our data collected showed no significant differences, but trends were noticed. Due to the lack of significant differences in our data, we failed to reject our null hypothesis which stated that an increase in the concentration of CuSO4 increases or has no effect on the growth rate of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. We believe this is due to Chlamydomonas reinhardtii being able to tolerate and benefit from the concentrations of CuSO4 used in this experiment (Boswell et al. 2002).