Effects of temperature manipulation and solution treatment on the Beta vulgaris craca plant cell membrane and the change of the concentration of betacyanin when placed under these various stresses
Introduction:
The Beta vulgaris craca plant, commonly referred to as the beet root contains a pigment, red in colour, called betacyanin. The betacyanin’s containment within the cells of the beet root cell relies on the stability of the plant’s membrane structure. The manipulation of the cell’s membranes through temperature change and solution treatments often causes damage to the vacuoles within the cell which contain betacyanin. Poovaiah and Leopold released a similar scientific publication in 1976 which analyzed the effects of inorganic salts …show more content…

The test tubes were tested under room temperature as this experiment did not involve the manipulation of temperature, rather the change induced due to chemical manipulation. These test tubes filled with the different solvents were left at room temperature for approximately thirty minutes each soon which they underwent the same stirring technique performed previously, vortex stirring for five seconds every ten minutes. The chemicals used in this experiment are categorized as fairly strong chemicals. This should serve as an indication of dramatic damage done to the beet cells. After 30 minutes, the surrounding solvents were measured into a cuvette and the absorbance level of the solvents was measured by the spectrophotometer.
Results:
The simple test of cell membrane strength used slices of beet root plant suspended in water at different temperatures as well as various solvents. The results of the tests varied as the extent of manipulation varied. This relationship provides a trend in data once recorded. Graph 1 illustrates the different dilutions of the stock solutions of the betacyanin. This calculation was taken to provide data for the standard curve which was then used as a guideline for the rest of the experiment as it laid out the various set concentrations of the different solutions exposed to various measurements of betacyanin. The increase in concentration of the diluted samples means that