My 8 Credit Thesis With Dr. Bazely

In my 8-credit thesis with Dr. Bazely, my goal is to understand the distribution of the fungal endophyte within Festuca hallii and F.campestris. By the end of the semester, I should have a body map of either grass that displays where the endophyte is found and where it is most concentrated. To do this I am fixing and staining the top, middle and bottom sections of each leaf and the pseudostem of a selected tiller. After the samples are stained, I look at them under a microscope and count the number of endophyte hyphae, which will then be used to measure the hyphal density relative to each section of the plant. Both of these palnts will be compared to F.rubra, a closely related fescue species a any deviations form F.rubra will be recorded

If I am able to, will use an immunoblot assay to determine if the hyphal density correlates with the intensity of the colour on the immunoblots. Confirming this will be useful for future experiments because an immunoblot takes very little time compared to staining and observing the grass under a microscope.

I expect the hyphae to be most dense at the pseudostem of both fescue. I expect it to behave similarly to F.rubra, the endophyte infects the seeds of the plant before making its way up to the leaves. The endophyte has already deviated from expectations because in some of the sample plants, the endophyte was found in the plant but seems to have disappeared, which is unheard of.