Planaria regeneration

[Soldier_of_Light]

Hi,


I am doing a science fair project on the effect of magnetic fields on the regeneration rate of planaria. I was wondering whether there were any good websites or sources for info about planaria regeneration, regeneration in general, and wound healing. Also, I am having trouble finding good info on neodymium magnets. Thanks...

[SciB]

Hi,

What a great idea for a project! I hope you let us know what happened.

I did a search for planaria and regeneration and found some good sites for you. There are lots more. If you have some specific questions that we can help you answer, please post again.

1. YT video about regeneration research and using planaria as test organism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roZeOBZAa2Q

2. Cold Spring Harbor Protocols in Molec Biol for planarians
http://cshprotocols.cshlp.org/content/2 ... mo101.full

3. Origin of regenerative stem cells in planaria
https://phys.org/news/2017-02-key-regen ... naria.html

4. Regeneration in humans and regenerative medicine
https://www.eurostemcell.org/regenerati ... es-it-work

5. Human regeneration (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regeneration_in_humans

6. Possibilities for regeneration in humans (LiveScience)
https://www.livescience.com/59194-could ... limbs.html

7. Magnetic fields and regeneration
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp ... 3WkJoD3fmE

[Soldier_of_Light]

Hi,

I have another question:
Should I feed the planaria during the regeneration process?

[SciB]

Yes, you should feed all the planaria their normal diet.

[Soldier_of_Light]

HI,
I was just wondering how to end my abstract. Thanks

Moderator note: I've merged your new question in with the thread for your previous questions. Please keep all of your posts on that topic together so the expert who has been helping you will see that you have a follow-up question. Thank you and best of luck with your project.

[SciB]

Are you asking what your conclusion should be? Just state what your data showed and whether they support your hypothesis. You can post the hypothesis and the results, briefly, and then write a conclusion and we will let you know what we think.

Sybee

[Soldier_of_Light]

HI,
I was just having a little trouble ending my abstract well. Is there a specific note I should end it on? Here is the abstract I have so far...

What is the effect of a magnetic field on the regeneration rate of planaria? Do magnetic fields have an effect on unharmed planaria? In this experiment I examine the regeneration and growth rate of planaria, and how it is affected by magnetic fields. I experimented on six groups of planaria, four of which contained bisected planaria, and two that contained whole planaria. I created magnetic fields of varying strengths by placing neodymium magnets beneath the given group of planaria, which were contained in a petri dish (per group). Over the course of two weeks I fed, changed the water of, examined, and measured these planaria. I hypothesized that the regeneration rate of planaria will accelerate with the addition of a magnetic field, as well as that the higher the strength of the magnetic field, the faster the regeneration will take place. I also hypothesized that whole planaria will grow faster when exposed to a magnetic fields. My results show that planaria exposed to magnetic fields are hindered in both regeneration and growth, and that strong magnetic fields can even kill planaria. This experiment will help us to better understand what effects magnets have on living things, and how we can use magnets to treat diseases such as cancer.

[SciB]

Interesting results!

I think your Abstract ending is ok. Your results show that magnetic fields can be harmful to planaria, which was unexpected. How strong was the magnetic? You might want to give the field strength of the magnets in the abstract if you know it. It is possible that magnetic fields below a certain threshold are beneficial to cell growth but above a certain level they are harmful. The big question is what is the magnetic field doing that causes cell death? You could add a statement about this if you have a hypothesis about how a magnetic field might act on the molecules or ions within a cell.

Humans are subjected to strong magnetic fields during MRI. Does this kill cells? I have never heard of that. You have a great opportunity to speculate on the implications of your findings in the Results and Discussion section of your paper. Read the literature and summarize what is known about magnetic fields and their interaction with cells. Explain what follow-up experiments you would do to better understand what is happening at the cellular level.

Congratulations on completing a great science project!

Sybee

[Soldier_of_Light]

I agree that I need more information concerning the results of my experiment. I have looked extensively for explanations but it seems as though there is not much information about planaria or why magnetic fields effect cells the way they did in my experiment. Do you have any suggestions as far as more sources to look at?

Thanks for helping me so much with this project.

[SciB]

Hi,

I did another search for cells in magnetic fields and found some new things but still no explanation of how magnetism interacts with cells. I did find an important point that you should include in your write-up. Magnetic fields can be generated in different ways. A neodymium magnet produces what is called a static field because the 'lines' of magnetic force are fixed in space around the magnet.

In addition to the magnetism of a magnet there is the electromagnetism associated with an electric current. If AC voltage is applied, the magnetism will oscillate in step with the voltage and this shifting magnetic field may have different effects from a fixed magnetic field. A DC voltage electromagnet would have a fixed field.

Some papers published about the effects of magnetism on cells or organisms used oscillating magnetic fields rather than static ones, so pay attention to the methods section when looking at their results.

Magnetic Fields Encourage Cellular Reprogramming
https://cen.acs.org/articles/92/web/201 ... mming.html
In this report, researchers were studying the conversion of adult body cells into pluripotent stem cells. This is a useful technique because the stem cells can then be converted into blood cells, neurons, muscle cells, etc. What they found was 30% more cell conversion to stem cells when a magnetic field of 1 milliTesla was applied. They used AC voltage to generate the magnetic field, however, so it oscillated at a certain number of cycles per second. Interestingly, they also showed that putting the cells in a box that isolated them from the Earth's magnetic field completely prevented them from turning into stem cells. The scientists admit that they do not know how cell's interact with a magnetic field.

A static magnetic field alters conversion of brain cells
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06331-8
This is a really technical paper so will be hard for you to understand. I chose it because the researchers used a static magnetic field rather than an oscillating one. The field strength was 0.3 Tesla. That's why i asked you if you knew what the field strength of your magnet was because that is an important independent variable in your experiment. In this report, the activity of specific genes was changed by the magnetic field and the release of protein neurotransmitters was increased. The central nervous system seems to be especially responsive to magnetic fields. Kind of makes you hesitant to have an MRI done. Those powerful magnetic fields might erase some memories.

There are papers cited in the reference section that you can take a look at. Try to find a review that summarizes the results from many papers and evaluates their results.

If you get stuck with the jargon and the unfamiliar methods just post again and we'll try to help.

Good luck!

Sybee

[Soldier_of_Light]

Hi,
Just wanted to let you know I found out the strengths and grades of the individual magnets I used.

Smallest magnets (1/2" diameter, 1/32" thickness) N52 grade, 918 Gauss surface field strength per magnet, Brmax 14,800 Gauss, BHmax 52 MGOe
Medium magnets (1/2" diameter, 1/16" thickness) N52 grade, 1,795 Gauss surface field strength per magnet, Brmax 14,800, BHmax 52 MGOe
Largest magnets (1/2" diameter, 1/8 " thickness) N35 grade, 2,706 Gauss surface field strength per magnet (I couldn't find the Brmax or BHmax for these magnets)

The Gauss is the number that shows the strength of the magnet, is it not?

Thanks

[SciB]

Yes, the gauss, the unit of magnetic flux density, commonly called magnetic 'strength', was named for a German physicist, Carl Friedrich Gauss, who studied the properties of magnetism in the 1800s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss_(unit)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_flux

You need to know that there are two systems of units that scientists have used. one is the CGS, which stands for centimeter-gram-second, and the other is the SI, which stands for Systeme International, International System in French. The SI is the one used by most scientists today. Both CGS and SI are based on the metric system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_(unit)

Gauss units (G) are used in the CGS system.
Tesla units (T) are used in the SI system.
One T = 10,000 G
One milliTesla (mT) = 10 G

The technical terminology in measuring magnetic fields is pretty complicated. There's a lot of math involved and the equations are different for fixed magnetic fields such as those of neodymium magnets compared to oscillating magnetic fields that are used in some studies.

Most of the recent published papers on magnetic field interactions with living things use the SI units, so you need to convert your magnetic strength form gauss to milliteslas.

10 G = 1 mT

980 G = 98 mT
1795 G = 179 mT
2706 G = 270 mT

Now you can compare your magnetic field strength with that in published papers that use the SI unit, tesla.

I don't know what the other measurements that you mentioned mean. You'll have to look them up. The measurement you will see in papers is the field strength. The others must have some specialized use, maybe in engineering or electronics.

Let us know when you have more questions. The interaction of magnetic fields with living cells is really interesting and may turn out to be more important than scientists realized. I'm thinking of the people living on the space station. They are no longer exposed to the Earth's magnetic field. Does this have any effect on their bodies?

On the other hand, patients who receive an MRI can be exposed to fields of 1.5 T (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ ... ce_imaging). That's about 15 times as strong as your weakest magnet! What effect does that have on a person's brain cells? The brain has a weak magnetic field of its own, but it is very weak compared to the MRI field. You might want to discuss this in your project report.

Good luck!

Sybee

[Soldier_of_Light]

Hi,

I wanted to let you know that I completed my science fair project! It was a big success - I won first place in my 7-8 grade section! Thanks for all your help with my experiment. I learned a lot from doing this project; more than I thought possible! You helped me to start learning about regeneration, and I hope I will be able to become more knowledgable on the subject in the future. Thanks again

[SciB]

Hi and thanks for the kind words and letting us know of your success! I am glad that my advice and answers were helpful. Congratulations on taking the prize in your division. On to the next!

The effect of electromagnetic fields on brain activity is an exciting and intensely interesting field for research. I have a feeling there is going to be a major breakthrough in this area in the next ten years. More and more brain-machine connections will be tried and proven successful. Eventually we may be able to ask Google a question by just thinking it and get the answer in our minds rather than on a screen. How cool would that be!

If you are good at math and like electronics and tinkering with circuits and electrodes as I do, this would be the best field of research to get into in the next few years. The AI people are working constantly on developing new learning algorithms that allow machines to reason and respond more like humans. And the robot makers like Boston Dynamics have constructed amazing droids that can outperform humans in many ways.

Good luck and see you next time!

Sybee