The effect of temperature on flagellar growth rate of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Abstract

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii are simple motile unicellular green algae that contain two anterior flagella. Due to the importance of flagella in many organisms for cellular processes we decided to determine the effect temperature change had on flagellar assembly. We used a change in pH to remove the flagella and then incubated the organism at temperatures of 10, 20 and 30 degrees Celsius. Incubated samples were taken every 5 minutes, fixed with IKI and then the flagella were measured via microscopy. Our results showed that the 20˚C and 30˚C incubations had the most rapid flagellar assembly with growth rates of 0.13 µm/min and 0.15 µm/min respectively and the 10˚C incubation had a slower flagellar assembly rate of 0.038 µm/min. Using ANOVA and Tukey’s post hoc statistical analysis our results showed that there was a significant difference in flagellar assembly between the 20˚C and 10˚C (p= .003) incubation as well as the 30˚C and 10˚C incubation (p=.001). However, the flagellar assembly at our 30˚C and 20˚C incubation was not significantly different (p= .322).