planaria

[horses24/7]

Hello, I would like some advice on my science fair project please. My mother is diabetic and she has been using artificial sweeterners instead of sugar to keep her sugar levels under control. I woudl like to test the artificial products on regenaration of planaria. I am looking into buying planaria, but I am not sure how to go about testing the sugars. What concentration shoudl I start with? How shoudl I make the dilutions? Please help? Thank you.

[aelin]

Hi,

This seems like an interesting question. I'm sure you have this worked out, but it might help us if you were to explain how testing sugars on planaria is connected to diabetes? I'm curious as to this relationship.

In terms of project logistics, I'd recommend starting with a broad spectrum. Start with a concentration of 0 g / mL (negative control) all the way up to as high as you can go, essentially to the saturation point, with concentrations in between (the more the merrier, but at some point it is not that useful to have 100 different concentrations). I'd make dilutions by simply weighing the sugar crystals and dissolving them in appropriate amounts of water (or some other solvent if you find it necessary, I'm not sure what planaria grow on). This should give you some nice dose-dependency curve data if indeed the sugar affects planaria in some way that you are measuring.

[horses24/7]

Hello, thank you fro your reply. I am trying to see what effects diffirent tyeps of sugar will have on regenartion of planaria. Since planaria is a live organisms, I thought it would be appropriet to sought of compare it to human cells/humans in a away. Thank you.

[deleted-71958]

Hi horses24/7,
Aelin brought up a good point before me: the connection between the reaction in planaria cells, and the human response in someone who's diabetic, to sugar, is not clear. Depending on whether the person has Type 1 or Type 2 (most likely the kind your mom has), the body either doesn't make enough insulin (a hormone that stimulates cells in the liver, muscle, and fat tissue to take up glucose) or cannot respond to insulin normally, respectively. This is a case of a metabolic disease, which does not revolve around the responses of individual cells in the body, but rather the efficiency of the entire system as a whole. Since planarian do not possess the same metabolism as humans, there could be no way to measure with them the effects of artificial sweeteners on humans.

However, you're off to a very good start by brainstorming. Diabetes is a very complex disease, and your project topic revolves around a pretty complex idea. If you are more interested in the effects of certain foods on the human body, I'd suggest a social sciences project. Depending on how much time and resources you have, you could poll a sample of people (a certain age range, female/male, etc) on their dietary habits over the course of 1-2 months, and having them rate, each time, how "healthy" or "fit" they feel. Track what they consume over the course of your experiment, and see what sorts additives or artificial sweeteners are present in these foods (this can be found by looking in the nutrition section). I am positive that, with other variables taken into consideration (whether the person exercises, has a fast metabolism, etc), you will notice a relationship between food intake and body health.

If you're more interested in the biological aspect, and want to measure specific cellular responses to chemicals, I suggest talking to your science teacher to come up with several topics you can explore, taking into consideration the kinds of resources you have.

Best of luck!
Please feel free to ask more questions/PM me if you have a follow-up.

Ktsshao

[horses24/7]

Thank you for helping me to narrow down what I am trying to do.

[LaurGar]

What exactly is planaria? I couldn't help but look at this post. It sounds interesting!
-Laurgar