Hey Kiana! I would say the most difficult part of our project was getting unexpected and sometimes conflicting results. It was very frustrating to perform the same dose response multiple times but have conflicting data. It is also hard to draw conclusions from inconsistent data. However, my group was able to push through the confusion and work with Pam and our TA’s to make sense of our data.
We would want to test lycopene at concentrations less than 0.3125% . This way we could see if the downward trend continues as the dose continues to decrease. If it does some of these smaller concentrations could be potential antibiotics.
Hello Lauren and thank you! Further research would need to be done to determine why lycopene showed a different trend than the leaf extract. It is probably due to the make up of the compounds themselves. What I can say is that we concluded that its possible the lycopene was acting as a nutrient to the bacteria at high doses while at lower doses it showed less growth. Perhaps there is something in the structure of lycopene that acts as a nutrient when in high concentration and it overpowers any other antibiotic properties we may have seen.
Based off of our data we don’t think it’s likely that lycopene could form a U shaped curve. The growth only seems to be promoted at high concentrations. However, the only way to know for sure is to run the test. If lycopene was tested at both higher ad lower concentrations than what we did in our project we could see if a u shaped curve appears.
The biggest challenge we ran into was choosing our negative control for the lycopene experiments. We first tried to dissolve lycopene into DMSO. We found that it was not soluble in DMSO. Due to this we performed an ethanol extraction on lycopene. Since, we now had lycopene dissolved in ethanol we needed to use it as our negative control as well. We tested 70% and 50% ethanol as the negative control in our lycopene experiments which failed. The ethanol was killing all of the bacteria. Since, our compound was dissolved in ethanol we had no way to know if our compound was doing anything. We tried again with 35% ethanol and were finally able to use it as our negative control. We took the ethanol down to a low enough concentration that it didn’t kill all the bacteria.
What was the most difficult aspect of your research project?
Hey Kiana! I would say the most difficult part of our project was getting unexpected and sometimes conflicting results. It was very frustrating to perform the same dose response multiple times but have conflicting data. It is also hard to draw conclusions from inconsistent data. However, my group was able to push through the confusion and work with Pam and our TA’s to make sense of our data.
Do you know around what size Lycopene doses your group would want to test in the future?
We would want to test lycopene at concentrations less than 0.3125% . This way we could see if the downward trend continues as the dose continues to decrease. If it does some of these smaller concentrations could be potential antibiotics.
Why do you think the lycopene showed a downward trend compared to the leaf extract? I found this really interesting, great presentation!
Hello Lauren and thank you! Further research would need to be done to determine why lycopene showed a different trend than the leaf extract. It is probably due to the make up of the compounds themselves. What I can say is that we concluded that its possible the lycopene was acting as a nutrient to the bacteria at high doses while at lower doses it showed less growth. Perhaps there is something in the structure of lycopene that acts as a nutrient when in high concentration and it overpowers any other antibiotic properties we may have seen.
For lycopene, is it possible that if you lowered the dosage enough that the bacteria would start to reproduce again?(forming like a U shaped curve)
Based off of our data we don’t think it’s likely that lycopene could form a U shaped curve. The growth only seems to be promoted at high concentrations. However, the only way to know for sure is to run the test. If lycopene was tested at both higher ad lower concentrations than what we did in our project we could see if a u shaped curve appears.
What was your biggest challenge overall with testing the Papayas (lycopene and leaf oil extract) with the Salmonella?
The biggest challenge we ran into was choosing our negative control for the lycopene experiments. We first tried to dissolve lycopene into DMSO. We found that it was not soluble in DMSO. Due to this we performed an ethanol extraction on lycopene. Since, we now had lycopene dissolved in ethanol we needed to use it as our negative control as well. We tested 70% and 50% ethanol as the negative control in our lycopene experiments which failed. The ethanol was killing all of the bacteria. Since, our compound was dissolved in ethanol we had no way to know if our compound was doing anything. We tried again with 35% ethanol and were finally able to use it as our negative control. We took the ethanol down to a low enough concentration that it didn’t kill all the bacteria.