The Effect of a Hydrochloric Acid Gradient on the Evaluation of Caenorhabditis elegans Nonseparable Judgment
School Name
Spring Valley High School
Grade Level
10th Grade
Presentation Topic
Zoology
Presentation Type
Non-Mentored
Abstract
Microorganisms have been utilized to study the human nervous system for decades. However, the level of intelligence within the microorganism themselves has been minimally studied. The goal of this experiment was to determine the level of neural complexity in the microorganism, Caenorhabditis elegans. It was hypothesized that C. elegans would demonstrate a nonlinearly separable positive association with the higher and lower values of an HCl gradient and food, because they would be able to grasp the correlation between food and hydrochloric acid gradient learning. C. elegans were put into petri dishes with three distinct HCl concentrations. The C. elegans underwent three memory trials with 100μM and 300μM HCl; these trials taught them the association between 100μM and 300μM HCl and E. coli. The C. elegans were then put into petri dishes with all of the HCl concentrations to test their learned association. The position of the C. elegans were recorded after 1 minute and was the recorded data. Each C. elegans represented one trial. There was a minimum count of 30 C. elegans before experimentation began. Based on the results, C. elegans learned the positive association of 100μM and 300μM HCl with food and the negative association of 200μM HCl. A Pearsonś Chi-square test was used to determine the p-value. For all of the proof of concept and experimental trials the p-value was less than 0.025 thus statistically significant.
Recommended Citation
Desai, Parth, "The Effect of a Hydrochloric Acid Gradient on the Evaluation of Caenorhabditis elegans Nonseparable Judgment" (2020). South Carolina Junior Academy of Science. 127.
https://scholarexchange.furman.edu/scjas/2020/all/127
Location
Furman Hall 119
Start Date
3-28-2020 9:30 AM
Presentation Format
Oral and Written
Group Project
No
The Effect of a Hydrochloric Acid Gradient on the Evaluation of Caenorhabditis elegans Nonseparable Judgment
Furman Hall 119
Microorganisms have been utilized to study the human nervous system for decades. However, the level of intelligence within the microorganism themselves has been minimally studied. The goal of this experiment was to determine the level of neural complexity in the microorganism, Caenorhabditis elegans. It was hypothesized that C. elegans would demonstrate a nonlinearly separable positive association with the higher and lower values of an HCl gradient and food, because they would be able to grasp the correlation between food and hydrochloric acid gradient learning. C. elegans were put into petri dishes with three distinct HCl concentrations. The C. elegans underwent three memory trials with 100μM and 300μM HCl; these trials taught them the association between 100μM and 300μM HCl and E. coli. The C. elegans were then put into petri dishes with all of the HCl concentrations to test their learned association. The position of the C. elegans were recorded after 1 minute and was the recorded data. Each C. elegans represented one trial. There was a minimum count of 30 C. elegans before experimentation began. Based on the results, C. elegans learned the positive association of 100μM and 300μM HCl with food and the negative association of 200μM HCl. A Pearsonś Chi-square test was used to determine the p-value. For all of the proof of concept and experimental trials the p-value was less than 0.025 thus statistically significant.
