Interns and Tom at the Prakash Lab conducted experiments with single-celled Tetrahymena cultures provided by Cornell University’s ASSET kits. Tetrahymena are ciliated protozoans that freely swim and can take up nutrients via their mouth. The dye enters the body in a food vacuole and is broken down by the cell’s lysosomes which allows for the “food” nutrients to be absorbed. In this experiment, we fed Tetrahymena India ink and observed tiny ink pods make their way into the cells.

Here is a picture of Tetrahymena imaged with Foldscope. Can you identify the ink pods?

Here is a short video of the Tetrahymena cultures after they have been introduced to the India ink. You can see the ink pods in each individual culture. We added a detaining medium into the culture in order to slow down the activity of the culture in order to get a better visual of their movements.

Alice, Antonio, Tom