Dear Martha The convential way would be to count cell numbers on a
haemocytometer slide, however that is tedious. Another and more
adventurous way is to measure either visble absorption 615nm or
fluorescence of the phycocyanin. This has the advantage of being able
to separate the bg cells from green cells in a mixed suspension if that
is pertinent to your study.. In a cell suspension the light entering a
cuvette is scattered everywhere so one needs to insert a diffusing disc
of etched glass or oiled paper (opalescent glass is the best) to
recollect the light and transmit to the photocell of the
spectrophotometer. If you do a visible scan of an algal suspension you
will not get any sense out of it until you insert a diffusing glass in
front of the collecting phototube. If you simply want algal biomass and
don't need to separate different types, use an haematocrit tube as used
for blood determinations. Spin at standard time and speed and calibrate
the length of sedimented cells against some biomass measurement
Hope this is of some use.
Warwick Silvester
Dept of Biological Sciences
University of Waikato
Hamilton
New Zealand
Ph 07 838 4316
Fax 07 838 4324
E-mail w.silvester at waikato.ac.nz
-----Original Message-----
From: mmphillips at stkate.edu [mailto:mmphillips at stkate.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, 3 March 2004 4:35 a.m.
To: plant-ed at net.bio.net
Subject: Measuring Growth of Anabaena
Dear Plant-Ed:
We do independent research projects for our General Biology lab and I've
got a student group who wants to do a project on eutrophication using
Anabaena. We've struggled before with how to quantify growth with
Anabaena and haven't found a good method. Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks,
Martha
Martha M. Phillips, Ph.D
Biology Department
The College of St. Catherine
2004 Randolph Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55105
651-690-6630
mmphillips at stkate.edu
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