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Project Information |
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Name: Xingyu Zhou Group Category: 10-12 Team Size: 1 Project
Type: Experimental Language: English Summary: The purpose of my experiment was to find the health benefits of different types of tree bark left behind in the wood industry. I made tree bark extracts from common coniferous (Jack Pine and White Spruce) and deciduous (Paper Birch and Trembling Aspen) trees and fractionated each extract into three fractions according to the hydrophobisity, measured the polyphenol amounts and the antioxidizing activity of the tree bark fractions, tested the tree bark fractions in the inhibition of microbial growth, and examined the anticancer properties of the tree bark fractions. Software
Tools: Hardware
Tools: Source
of Idea: I started this project last year, and tested the antioxidizing, antimicrobial, and antimutagenic effects of crude extracts of four kind of tree bark made using water. The results were quite positive so I decided to continue the project by fractionating the extracts with different solvents in order to define the chemical composition of the extracts, and study anticancer effects of the fractionated extracts on cell proliferation of some human cancer cell lines. Awards: This project won the top prize in the open category at the Saskatoon Sanofi-Aventis BioTalent Challenge and will compete at the national Sanofi-Aventis BioTalent Challenge in May in Ottawa, ON. Previous Projects: 2005 - Salt Tolerance: Will Biotechnology Help? http://www.virtualsciencefair.org/2005/zhou5x0/public%5Fhtml/ 2006 - One Shade Too Dark: Tale of Condensed Tannins in Faba Bean Seed Coats http://www.virtualsciencefair.org/2006/zhou6x2/index.htm 2007 - Peeling Away Problems: The Antioxidating, Antimicrobial, and Antimutagenic Effects of Tree Bark http://www.virtualsciencefair.org/2007/zhou7x2/index.html |
© Copyright 2008 by Xingyu Zhou.
