Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My science fair project is whether marinating meat in different liquids before it is grilled will reduce the amount of carcinogens. I am planning on mixing naphthalene with four different components. To detect the carcinogens I was going to use Tradescantia. The Tradescantia never flowered and I can't find another plant that has long stamen hairs. Would would know another method to detect the carcinogens?

Hi


Have you thought of Ames Test to detect carcinogens. I am not sure of the procedure you are using but see if you can use this test. Let me know if you need more help.

Thanks

Sumit Mitra

Hi,

Sumit has made an excellent suggestion. The Ames test is a bacterial assay based on growing a histidine-dependent bacterium, Salmonella typhimurium, in growth medium that does not contain histidine. If colonies grow after exposure to the carcinogen, this confirms that a mutation has occurred. Here is more information.

http://www.bio.davidson.edu/courses/Bio ... b%208.html

The Ames test would require agar and the test organism, but would be easier to do

Here is a description of another genotoxicity test based on mammalian cell cultures

http://www.apredica.com/genotoxicity.ph ... DQodiRk5qQ

The Tradescantia assay seems to be used primarily for detection of carcinogens in the atmosphere:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7523892

This is an extremely good idea for a science project. Let us know if you have any questions about your project.

Donna Hardy

Thanks for all your help! I am excited to talk to my science teacher tomorrow about this information!

Hi,

Can anyone tell me where my science teacher can purchase Salmonella Typhimurium?

Thanks!!

Hi,

You'll have to do a little poking around to find a place to get the bacteria from. Typically, you can get materials from university research labs if you ask very very very politely (technically, they are supposed to share this kind of stuff, this is how I got my bacteria from a lab last year). To find research labs using Salmonella typhimurium, you can go into a big database like PubMed and search for "Salmonella Typhimurium Ames test" or something similar, and you'll find a bunch of papers (eg this one -- http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi- ... 4/PDFSTART) that all use the Ames test. Then, either contact those labs directly, or read in the paper in the methods section where that lab got their S. typhimurium (so in the link above, they purchased their Ames test kit from http://www.moltox.com/MutagenesisKits2.html).

Hope this helps!
Aaron Lin

thank you.

I did not get approval to the Salmonella mutant because it is a bsl-2, so i am going to look for a E.coli strain with a similar nutritional mutation to study. Right now I am looking for the the premade culture medium mix that lacks the nutrient that those mutants must be provided in order to live for E. coli nutritional mutant.