Effectiveness of Killing Yeast with Pepper Essays - Medicine, Cancer

Effectiveness of Killing Yeast with Pepper Or Cancer Treatment Project By: Introduction: The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a \"treatment\" created by pepper and water on cancer cells with varying amounts of the critical ingredient, pepper. Since I am not able to obtain cancer cells for the project I used yeast cells to stimulate cancer cells. I hypothesize that an exponential increase in concentration will result in a linear trend in the ratio of dead cells to cells due to an effect similar to Haber's law (but logarithmic instead of inverse polynomial). I believe this because it is quite clear the relation cannot be linear and since an increase in concentration will only increase the chances of a given cell dying. This is analogous to radioactive decay which is of course, exponential. Materials: Dropper 6 test tubes 1 for yeast to grow in Microscope Bromothymol Blue Distilled water Black Pepper Pestle and Mortar Yeast Sugar 6 slides and slide covers Procedure:1) Put an equal mass of sugar and yeast into a test tube. 2) Fill the test tube with water until it covers the yeast and sugar 3) Prepare the solutions of black pepper (instructions on this can be found within the appendix) 4) Wait for a day until the yeast cells grow. 5) Add 0.5ml of the yeast cell solution to each black pepper solution using a dropper. 6) Wait for another day for the yeast cells to die. 7) Using a dropper drop 1 drop on a slide for every single test tube of black pepper solution. Do not forget which slide is which. 8) Add 1 drop of bromothymol blue to each slide. This allows easy comparison between dead and alive cells as dead cells won't be able to keep it out of the cell. 9) Place the cover slide on the slide. 10) Observe the slides and collect data. Observations/Results: This graph very clearly supports and exponential relation between the percent of cells killed and the concentration of the solution (logarithmic the other way around). As expected, an exponential increase in concentration resulted in a linear increase ratio of cells killed. However with only 6 data points there is not enough evidence to conclude this with statistical significance any greater than p 0.2. The following are pictures I obtained from the samples, all at 1000x magnification. Concentrate (100%): 50% Solution: 10% Solution: 1% Solution: 0.1% Solution: 0.01% Solution: Discussion: I cannot say for certain whether pepper will be effective in killing cancer cells and hence a possible chemotherapy. The experiment I have done is with yeast and even then with only a very limited data set. Given the data I have collected here I hypothesize that pepper would be good at killing off cancer cells. Using only 0.5 g of the substance (with 25 mL water) resulted in killing around 60% of the yeast cells and extrapolating from the data I have obtained 5 g could possibly kill around 70% and 50 g, 80%. I recommend researching the effectiveness of pepper further as it's a very cheap substance and definitely worth trying based on my results. If solutions with pepper work as well on cancer cells as they do on yeast cells it would revolutionize modern cancer treatments with an inexpensive alternative to traditional chemotherapy drugs. This could potentially remove most side effects associated with chemotherapy including: Hair loss, lower white and red blood cell count, nausea, etc. as pepper is, of course, edible and safe (for the most part). Even if pepper wasn't found to be as effective as I believe it might still be used in conjunction with other drugs in the chemotherapy process because of how small initial amounts were effective (at least within my experiment). Conclusion: Black pepper is an effective way to kill yeast cells and may be effective against cancer cells. An exponential increase in the amount of pepper only gives a linear trend for the amount of dead cells. My hypothesis was confirmed. Appendix: Pre-lab Questions: Cancer is defined as abnormal cell growth. All cancers have the following in common: limitless cell division, no apoptosis, and the ability to form new blood cells (angiogenesis). Cancer is deadly if not treated because it causes growth of tumors in vital organs. While a tumor on its own is not deadly if it is