LAB: Is It Alive? Group 1 Marc, Tony, John

Does it have cells? We used a microscope to observe our organism, but we didn’t see cells in it. We weren’t able to see any cell-like structures (plants: cube-like, animals: rounded or other shape) We might need a microscope that has higher magnification to observe the cells. We also could stain the organism to see it better. The picture on the left was what we saw the second day of leaving it in saltwater. The adjacent picture was taken the day after.

Does it reproduce? We were not able to determine whether our organism reproduced. If we had been given more time and equipment we could have come up with a better experiment to decide whether it reproduced.

Does it respond to environment? Does it grow? When we placed the organism in the saltwater for a couple of days when we came back and observed it, it had gone from what looked like an egg to a bug- like creature. It didn’t grow in the soil or the sugar, and there was no growth in the control filled with just the organism. The organism grew in the freshwater but no movement was found in any of the questions. We determined that that the organism both grew and therefore responded to certain environments.

Does it convert energy? We were able to tell that our organism converted energy because we did a bromothymol blue test to see if it produced carbon dioxide, which would show that it converted energy (evidence of a waste product). The test came back positive for the organisms placed in fresh water and saltwater. So we determined that it converted energy.

Environments Soil: We expected some sort of plant to grow Saltwater: We expected some sort of micro- organism to grow Freshwater: We expected results similar to freshwater Sugar: Bugs or other insects Light: Control

Conclusion We used a microscope as well as slides and cover slips, Bromothymol Blue, and the computer for research. We concluded that our unknown is most likely alive, however there are some factors we cannot prove, and therefore we cannot be certain. Learning about cells, and the characteristics of living things helped us make our conclusion. We still aren’t wether the unknown reproduced or if it had cells.

Video This short video shows our organism moving around in a saltwater environment under our microscope. You can see many of the features of a living organism in it. Enjoy!