Presentation Type

Poster

Department

Biology

Location

Walker Conference Center B

Description

Physarum is a slime mold in the genus of mycetozoan and the family of Physaraceae. It is a single cellular, multinuclear organism that is not classified as an animal, plant, or fungi. The purpose of this experiment is to study the effect of different light wavelengths and the influence of gravity on Physarum growth patterns. The Physarum is grown in a bacteriological agar with distributed oats as its food base. Red, green, blue, red and blue, and no light was studied and expansion was documented. The possible effects of gravity conditions were introduced by a clinostat. The experiments showed that different light and gravity environments had no effect on expansion and growth of the Physarum in these conditions. The experimental results were analyzed using a single factor ANOVA test, concluding, all p-values showed statistical indifference between each condition. Therefore, the search for a food source has more influence on Physarum growth than different wavelengths of light and clinostat conditions.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Apr 27th, 1:45 PM Apr 27th, 3:00 PM

The Effects of Light Wavelength and Gravity on Physarum polycephalum Growth

Walker Conference Center B

Physarum is a slime mold in the genus of mycetozoan and the family of Physaraceae. It is a single cellular, multinuclear organism that is not classified as an animal, plant, or fungi. The purpose of this experiment is to study the effect of different light wavelengths and the influence of gravity on Physarum growth patterns. The Physarum is grown in a bacteriological agar with distributed oats as its food base. Red, green, blue, red and blue, and no light was studied and expansion was documented. The possible effects of gravity conditions were introduced by a clinostat. The experiments showed that different light and gravity environments had no effect on expansion and growth of the Physarum in these conditions. The experimental results were analyzed using a single factor ANOVA test, concluding, all p-values showed statistical indifference between each condition. Therefore, the search for a food source has more influence on Physarum growth than different wavelengths of light and clinostat conditions.

 

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