Effect of NaCl and CuSO4 on Chloroplast Length of Euglena Gracilis
Abstract
Copper and sodium chloride are the major contaminants in the water body of cities with large population. In order to study how these contaminants affect the length of chloroplasts in Euglena gracilis, which is one crucial primary producer in the salmon food web, we treated E. gracilis with culture medium, 100 mM NaCl, 10 µM CuSO4 and 100 mM NaCl + 10 µM CuSO4 after 24 hours of incubation. After fixation, we measured the length of chloroplasts from four treatment groups. One-way ANOVA test showed F statistic of F(3,8) = 0.4379 and a p-value of 0.7321. Therefore, we failed to reject the null hypothesis. This indicates that in our specific experimental setting, the treatments did not have a significant effect on the length of the chloroplasts in E. gracilis. In the future studies, we will improve experimental design by eliminating as many as confounding variables and increasing the sample size of our study.
