Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

For my project, I will be testing the effects of UV radiation on yeast. I will be culturing the yeast, exposing it to UV radiation, and then running a DNA test on it using Electrophoresis. I was thinking of maybe trying to calculate in different amounts of melanin to make my project more relatable to humans, but I cannot think of any way to do it. Please help. Any input would be greatly appreciated! I would love to get an answer as soon as possible.

Hi,

You have a really good idea for a project, but I can understand your problem. You need something to measure. UV light can either cause cell death or mutations in yeast, and using DNA electrophoresis is not the usual type of analysis used to test mutations directly. The following are some comments that might be helpful for you in deciding what do to for your project:

Here are some other project ideas that you might be able to adapt for your project.

For example, here is a similar project from the Science Buddies website that is based on survival of bacterial after exposure to UV light. You could easily adapt this for yeast.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p017.shtml

Here is a yeast project that has a method for measuring yeast metabolism after exposure to antifungal agents. Perhaps you could adapt this test method after exposing the yeast to UV light.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p012.shtml

If you used a pigmented yeast, you could look for mutation of colonies to a non-pigmented form by observing colonies growing on an agar plate.

Melanin production can be measured using a specific immunoassay, as described in the following paper.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1231073/

What is your project question? What is your primary objective? Do you want to do a UV experiment and measure the effect of UV on the yeast cells? Or, do you want to do an experiment that involves DNA electrophoresis? Do you already have a DNA electrophoresis unit?

Please let me know more about what you want to do, and I’m sure I’ll have more suggestions.

Donna Hardy