Foreign Perspectives

We were split into two large groups yesterday with one group doing experiments whilst we were looking at some aspects of stress responses in the algae.

What we were doing initially was examining the response to light of two initially identical algae, one of which was exposed to a bright light and one of which wasn’t. In principle, they should each have shown an adaptation to the different lighting conditions. As always with plant experiments though there are lots of variables that can affect the result of any experiment so some of the groups doing the main experiment found what was expected, some found aspects that were expected and others found something entirely different. Why that was so seemed to be down to some variables that we’d inadvertently introduced (taking the algae from different regions of the flask mainly) and one that couldn’t be avoided (turning off the light over the weekend). Anyway, that took most of the day working with the oxygen electrode and the light box and then plotting the results.

Towards the end we managed to fit in another experiment looking at the concentration of malondialdehyde and another group did an ascorbate assay which I think we’re doing on Tuesday.

Together those took us neatly up to 5pm when they like us to leave the lab which leaves a bit of a gap before teatime at a quarter to six.

Two evening lectures this evening. The first compulsory one was basically a run-through of a range of mini case-studies on the various pigments talked about in the preparatory reading ie chlorophyll, cartenoids and flavonoids. Quite interesting and useful background to get us a bit more fired up about this residential which the majority of people are on simply because they have to do it for the life sciences degree.

The second one was notionally optional but probably useful to a lot of people as it was on the presentation which we have to prepare on Thursday afternoon and do on Friday morning. In previous years you’d to present to an audience comprised of what was then three different residential courses. This time around we’ve only to present to those doing our own course which reduces the time required somewhat and means that the course breaks up at 1pm rather than 3pm which suits a lot of people.

Quite a good day on the whole and one which gave us a chance to use a range of tools and techniques.