Introduction:
Teratogen is a factor the causes malformation in embryo development. As a result of a teratogen you get teratogenesis. Teratogenesis is abnormal development resulting from environmental factors (Lab 4). The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effect of a teratogen on the development of sea urchin embryos. The teratogen used in this experiment was ethanol at various concentrations. As alcohol concentrations increase, the permeability of cellular membranes changes and the protein to protein interactions are altered (Lab 4). In the experiment 2% and .5% ethanol was used. We performed this experiment in order to see if there would be changes in the sea urchin embryo if we introduced a teratogen into its environment. …show more content…
Female and male sea urchins were provided by the lab. In order to differ the males from the females we injected them with KCl (1ml~2ml) to see if they produced sperm or eggs. If the sea urchin produced a cloudy white substance then it was eggs. Once we discovered it was female we then invert it and put it in beaker filled ASW. If it produced sperm we could dry it and place it onto a petri dish. Once we collected the eggs we washed them with ASW twice. The eggs were transferred into a 50 ml falcon tube. We let it settle in the bottom then the removed ASW and added fresh ASW and resuspend it twice. The concentration of the eggs was altered to .1%. egg solution was added to a petri dish. 3 petri dishes were made, .5% ethanol, 2% ethanol, and a control group. Each dish contained 20 ml of ASW and .5 ml of egg and sperm. The temperature they were kept at was 25° Celsius. The embryos were measured after 24 hours of …show more content…
I predicted that there would be no abnormal embryos present in the 0.5% ethanol plate. However, there were 30 abnormal embryos (Figure 1). I assumed that the 0.5% concentration would be too low to have a significant difference on the embryonic development. The other half of my hypothesis was proven correct by the data. I predicted that were would be over half of the embryos deformed and a total of 35 embryos had abnormal embryonic development (Figure 1.). The reason why we see an increase in abnormal embryos is because of the increase of concentration. The increase of concentration magnifies the alterations that ethanol made, causing more to be abnormal in the 2% and not the .5%. Similar work was done by Katherine Hernandez and Haley Duncan, but they considered alcohol effects on embryonic development of sea urchin embryos. Their findings are similar to mine. They reported that the embryos showed to have delayed growth and reduction of growth in embryos as a total (Hernandez). Increasing ethanol will alter normal embryonic development. To further this experiment next, we could look to see what other teratogens have a similar effect to sea
Teratogen is a factor the causes malformation in embryo development. As a result of a teratogen you get teratogenesis. Teratogenesis is abnormal development resulting from environmental factors (Lab 4). The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effect of a teratogen on the development of sea urchin embryos. The teratogen used in this experiment was ethanol at various concentrations. As alcohol concentrations increase, the permeability of cellular membranes changes and the protein to protein interactions are altered (Lab 4). In the experiment 2% and .5% ethanol was used. We performed this experiment in order to see if there would be changes in the sea urchin embryo if we introduced a teratogen into its environment. …show more content…
Female and male sea urchins were provided by the lab. In order to differ the males from the females we injected them with KCl (1ml~2ml) to see if they produced sperm or eggs. If the sea urchin produced a cloudy white substance then it was eggs. Once we discovered it was female we then invert it and put it in beaker filled ASW. If it produced sperm we could dry it and place it onto a petri dish. Once we collected the eggs we washed them with ASW twice. The eggs were transferred into a 50 ml falcon tube. We let it settle in the bottom then the removed ASW and added fresh ASW and resuspend it twice. The concentration of the eggs was altered to .1%. egg solution was added to a petri dish. 3 petri dishes were made, .5% ethanol, 2% ethanol, and a control group. Each dish contained 20 ml of ASW and .5 ml of egg and sperm. The temperature they were kept at was 25° Celsius. The embryos were measured after 24 hours of …show more content…
I predicted that there would be no abnormal embryos present in the 0.5% ethanol plate. However, there were 30 abnormal embryos (Figure 1). I assumed that the 0.5% concentration would be too low to have a significant difference on the embryonic development. The other half of my hypothesis was proven correct by the data. I predicted that were would be over half of the embryos deformed and a total of 35 embryos had abnormal embryonic development (Figure 1.). The reason why we see an increase in abnormal embryos is because of the increase of concentration. The increase of concentration magnifies the alterations that ethanol made, causing more to be abnormal in the 2% and not the .5%. Similar work was done by Katherine Hernandez and Haley Duncan, but they considered alcohol effects on embryonic development of sea urchin embryos. Their findings are similar to mine. They reported that the embryos showed to have delayed growth and reduction of growth in embryos as a total (Hernandez). Increasing ethanol will alter normal embryonic development. To further this experiment next, we could look to see what other teratogens have a similar effect to sea