Food Vacuoles Lab Report

Adrian Molina
December 1, 2015
Biology Lab
The Affect of Cigarette Extract on Food Vacuole

Introduction a. background Tetrahymena are Single celled cicilated protists, which are known to tolerate a diverse range of environments. Tetrahymena are often used in experiments because they are easy to culture and have similar life processes as multicellular organisms. Tetrahymena is covered with short hair-like projections or cilia, that sweep food particles into its oral groove. The particles are then engulfed and enclosed within vacuoles in the process of phagocytes. Tobacco extract is a colorless toxic found in tobacco products thin a small doses acts as a stimulant, but in larger doses starts to inhibit the autonomic system and other

Meaning if the extract inhibits cilia, the affects for the human functioning airways would become weak due to cilia being the one that helps move the airway surface fluids and mucus. Providing continuous cleansing of the airway surface, which is a vital defense against inhaled particles.

Materials and Methods
a. experimental design: To begin the experiment we made two groups one called the control group and one called the experimental group with tobacco. For the control group we added a mixture of 20 microliters of tetrahymena, 1% India ink and 1% of glutaraldehyde to a microscope slide to create the control group . In the experimental tobacco group we added the same amount of substances only difference was 50 microliters of tobacco extract was added to the mixture. We then obsevered the two slides for number of cells as well as for food vacuoles inside a cell using a microscope at times of 0,5,10,20, and 30 minutes.

Results
The following graphs show the results of this experiment. The tetrahymena sample that was introduced to concentrated tobacco had a lower cell/vacuole ratio than the tetrahymena sample that was not exposed to

Based on the results the hypothesis is correct that if tobacco extract is added to food vacuoles that less vacuoles will be visible and cellular process would slow down. The contamination of samples and the use of tetrahymena in which most of the cells in the samples were dead made it difficult to get a ratio of cells to vacuoles that accurately depicted the difference between cells with nicotine and cells without. Factors that affected the accuracy of the experiment was unfamiliarity with the equipment and difficulty of find the cells on the slides. One questions posed is at what concentration of nicotine would other cell functions begin to shut down. From this experiment, we can see that the assumption we made about human appetite suppression could be