Submission 2023
| Submitted by: | Kallum McDonald |
| Department: | Agricultural, Food & Nutritional Science |
| Faculty: | Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences |
The tubes in the image contain Arabidopsis thaliana seeds submerged in methanol-sulfuric acid after incubating at high temperature for 2 hours. During this incubation, pigments are released from the seed coats, providing redish-pink coloration. From left to right, each tube contains fewer and fewer seeds, producing a visible gradient in the solutions. This experiment involves the direct methylation of lipids into fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) to allow for gas chromatography analysis of fatty acid and total lipid content. This was the most common experiment in my thesis project, which involves the genetic manipulation of seed lipid content in Arabidopsis seeds. An additional chapter of my thesis involved the optimization of this lipid extraction & analysis protocol, and the manuscript is under review.