shady baby.

plants which sense competition from neighbouring plants do so by being able to detect the wavelengths of light hitting them. light which has passed through green leaves is has a high proportion of 'far red' light. lots of plants respond to this 'far red' by growing taller to out-compete their neighbours.

plants which are preyed upon by insects release a stress hormone which catalyses the plant's synthesis of compounds which are toxic to the insects. part of this response involves the stunting of plant growth: it has been assumed that this is to 'switch' the main energy consuming processes of the plant from growth to this toxic compound synthesis.

it has been hypothesised previously that far red light responses can happen because part of the far red light response inhibits the stress hormone 'growth stunt'.

i am investigating this!

i have 10 different modified lines of the plant model species Arabidopsis thaliana.

some of lines have a mutation in a signalling protein responsible for light and/or jasmonate (a plant stress hormone) responses.

some of the lines have significant proteins of interest (ie cyclin, which is only synthesised in actively dividing cells) hooked up to a 'reporter' construct which turns blue upon staining.

some of the lines have a mutation AND a reporter construct.

i have grown up 20x of each line in each of the following conditions:

white light without jasmonate 

white light with jasmonate

far red light without jasmonate

far red light with jasmonate

and i can assess each plants response to the conditions by:

i) measuring hypercotyl (immature stem)

ii) looking for blue spots after staining of the reporter lines

therefore I have 8 of the following plates:

this is my life at the moment.

this dissertation is worth 20 credits.

i am also studying 5 other modules worth 20 credits:

cellular signalling

genes, genomes and genomics

microbial biotechnology

cell biology and mechanisms of disease

food domestication and sustainability

all of these are assessed by 30% coursework and 70% exam.

I WANT TO GRADUATE ALREADY.