GREAT FALLS – Jen Oaks loves flowers.
“Flowers make me happy,” said Oaks, a student at Great Falls College MSU.
However, Oaks’ appreciation of flowers goes deeper than just enjoying their pretty looks.
“If we don’t have flowers, we don’t have bees, and if we don’t have bees, we don’t have life,” Oaks explained.
When the High Altitude Balloon group at Great Falls College MSU was looking for a biology experiment to add to its balloon launches, Oaks came up with the idea of sending flower seeds into out space.
Oaks wanted to see what affect UV and cosmic radiation has on the seeds of flowering plants.
“Our ozone is depleting,” she explained. “We’re going to be subjected somewhere down the road to more radiation. How will that affect our flowers?”
During the last high-altitude balloon launch in October, Oaks included in the payload marigold and zinnia seeds. The seeds were carried 104,000 feet above the earth. Some seeds were on the outside of the payload, where they were exposed to UV and cosmic radiation. Others were inside the payload, where they were blocked from UV rays but still exposed to cosmic rays. Oaks kept a third set of seeds on the ground, which were not launched into space, to serve as a control specimen.
The balloon was also equipped with UV sensors and thermometers, so Oaks knows how much radiation exposure the seeds had.
After the launch, she planted all the seeds to see if there were any differences in the three sets.
“We’re looking for mutations,” Oaks said. “We’re looking for patterns or color differences or a difference in the number of flowers that grow or if they even flower.”
Choosing to look at a flowering plant gives the research project a nice visual element, said Dr. Brenda Canine, instructional designer and NANSLO lab manager at GFC MSU.
Through this project, Oaks will be able to see phenotypes, or visual appearances of a genetic trait, in the flowers. Changes in those phenotypes can show if the radiation altered the flowers’ DNA, Canine explained.
“UV radiation is a known DNA mutagen,” Canine said.
For example, skin cancer is a mutation of DNA caused by UV rays. Seeds are basically DNA in a shell.
Better understanding the effects UV and cosmic radiation have on seeds could help future space missions, whether seeds are being taken into space to be planted on the space station or perhaps someday on Mars.
After the seeds were launched into space, Oaks planted them in a mini-greenhouse she constructed inside her house next to a window.
Oaks is already seeing preliminary results from the experiment.
“So far, the control seeds have grown the tallest,” she said.
The seeds placed on the outside of the payload and therefore exposed to both types of radiation are doing better than the seeds that were inside the payload.
The initial hypothesis of the experiment was the plants exposed to more radiation would be less viable.
“From her first round, she’s kind of seeing that,” Canine said.
However, this first round of the experiment is a pilot phase. Oaks hopes to send more seeds into space later this spring to expand the project. She also plans to collect seeds from the flowers she grows to see if radiation exposure affects subsequent generations.
Last fall, Oaks was awarded a $900 grant from the Montana Space Grant Consortium’s Award for Research in Engineering and Science, or ARES, program. The grant pays for Oaks’ time spent working on the project. This semester’s work is a continuation of that award.
Oaks will present her findings at the MSGC Student Research Symposium in Bozeman in April.
Oaks plans to continue the project long after the symposium.
Oaks will graduate this spring with an Associate of Science and an Associate of Arts from Great Falls College MSU. She plans to transfer to the University of Great Falls where she will study wildlife biology, and where she hopes to continue working on this project.
“This is something that could transfer with her,” Canine said.
Oaks hopes to study multiple generations of these flower seeds and continue to modify the project to learn as much as she can about the effects of radiation on flowers.
To learn more about Great Falls College MSU and its affiliation with the Montana Space Grant Consortium, contact admissions at 406-268-3700 or visit www.gfcmsu.edu.
By Erin Granger
Great Falls College MSU News Service
