Experiment

If calcium affects the actions of contractile proteins and intracellular signaling proteins involved in phagocytosis, which allows cillia to contract faster, then adding higher concentrations of calcium should lead to increased numbers of vacuoles in the Tetrahymena cells. Figure 3 and Figure 4 from the “Pseudopterosin A inhibits phagocytosis and alters intracellular calcium turnover in a pertussis toxin sensitive site in Tetrahymena thermophila” paper on Moodle. Figure 3 shows that the higher the calcium concentration, the higher the incidence of phagocytosis. In Figure 4, we see that the control group has a lower level of phagocytosis than does the group given the calcium. Both these figures suggest that our hypothesis is correct since in our hypothesis, we state that the calcium should lead to more phagocytosis and vacuoles. If our hypothesis is correct an increase in the number of vacuoles will occur with the higher concentration of calcium. Record the number of vacuoles in ten different cells with different calcium concentrations. We will compare the amount of vacuoles in the cells with different calcium concentrations to the control by looking at the standard deviation and mean.