Honors Theses
Date of Award
Fall 12-2020
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Erik Hom
Second Advisor
Wayne Gray
Third Advisor
Jason Hoeksema
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
Symbiotic relationships are extremely common in virtually all species. These relationships between organisms, particularly mutualistic symbioses, can have an incredibly large impact and can greatly affect the evolution of the species involved. Of particular interest is the suspected mutualistic relationship between green algae and fungi that may hold key evidence of how terrestrial plants evolved. In this experiment we established a method of quantifying the cells of each species involved in these symbioses through qPCR analysis to determine if the relationships are truly mutualistic. We developed a system for using DNA copies as a proxy for cell count in co-cultures of various species of algae and fungi to determine the nature of these symbioses. To perform a successful qPCR analysis, both primers and standards had to be created for each species and a method for quantification had to be determined. In this study, an effective method for producing reliable qPCR copy numbers in both the algal and fungal species was created and validated through preliminary experimental results. The methodology established in this thesis may be used in future studies of the fungal-algal co-culture assays to gain more insight into their possible mutualistic symbioses.
Recommended Citation
Garlotte, Isabelle Katherine, "The Design and Validation of a qPCR-Based Approach to Cell Quantification of Fungal-Algal Symbioses" (2020). Honors Theses. 1590.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/1590
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.