In one of my other classes this semester, I am working on an experiment involving seed germination. In this project, we took fungi found on Andropogon seeds and reintroduced that fungi to a different set of Andropogon seeds. The intention was to then measure the germination rate of these seeds in comparison to a control in an attempt to see if the mystery fungi were pathogenic. However, nothing in this process went correctly.
Every single one of the petri dishes we were experimenting on became contaminated, including the controls. While this had negative effects for our experiment as a whole, it did end up looking extremely interesting. Our experiment became largely more complicated than expected in terms of usable data, but much more interesting as a person interested in fungal and bacterial growth.
My original plan for this system was to try and replicate the original experiment, including the ten Andropogon seeds and the mystery fungus. I spent perhaps too long trying to set up an easy and clean system for setting up the seeds. However, I decided it got too visually complicated. I realized it would become very easily unclear exactly which seeds had germinated and which had not. So I instead opted to go for a single large seed in the center of the dish. This would make understanding the system more feasible. While making this choice made some visual issues easier, it did set me back quite a bit and made much of the work I had done useless.
Once the seeds had been taken care of, I then started work on the actual contaminants themselves.
First I wanted to go with the black dots that covered the plates and surrounded the seeds.
Then, I wanted to replicate the odd beige rings that were found around many of the seeds. The second photo is not the most successful at actually capturing how they looked, but I was looking to replicate a series of being rings that surrounded the seeds individually, in nearly the same shape as the seed itself, only larger. Finally, I wanted to find a way to recreate the look of the hyphae, a network of fungus that took root in the material we used to grow the seeds.
Right now, this is how my system looks. It is still a work in progress, held back slightly by the time spent on the initial, unused idea.
From here, I need to instate the system by which the seed germinates or not. I also hope to add another contaminant in, one based on the black spheres that grew in the plates shown below. I also hope to add more detail to the seed itself.
