Supervisor and project title:<\/p>\n
Why I chose this topic\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n To be quite honest, I didn\u2019t. Unfortunately, for my research project, we were required to rank four topics in order of what we\u2019d most like to do. I\u2019m quite lucky in the sense that I was given my second choice \u2013 Plant Biology \u2013 as I\u2019m aware some people were given their fourth choice, for example; however, researching whether root hairs are integral to water uptake is very different from the marine-orientated study I would\u2019ve liked to have dedicated to the past six months of my life.<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s imperative that you bear in mind for BIOL387 that you may have a topic you\u2019re not fanatical about, but it\u2019s the skills that you gain during the process that are important.<\/p>\n How much time was spent in the lab\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n I was in the glasshouse every three days for the ten-day period whilst the plants were growing for basic husbandry, like watering them and providing stakes for mechanical help. During the experimentation period, I was in the glasshouse for sometimes four or five hours day, including weekends, gathering all of the physiological measurements.<\/p>\n What I investigated\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Essentially, I utilised a barley mutant (without root hairs) and its wild-type to investigate the effects of soil drying on the plant\u2019s physiological response. Tonnes of research has gone into the molecular and genetic basis of root hairs, but limited study has taken place into their importance to water uptake. Studies such as this can potentially inform decisions with regards to plant genetic modification, particularly as the incidence of drought rises due to climate change and we have an increasing threat to global food security because of an ever-growing population.<\/p>\n A typical day involved\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Usually, I would arrive at the glasshouse and make all the physiological measurements at the same time each day – weighing would occur at 10 am for example. Measurements like stomatal conductance and leaf length took place daily, whereas ABA (the most exciting part because using liquid nitrogen made me feel like a scientist for two minutes a week), would be measured weekly.<\/p>\n What I discovered\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n No significant differences it seems \u2013 how joyous my write up shall be. My results indicate that root hairs do not play a major role in water uptake, but they are important for other things like phosphorus uptake, so they\u2019re still necessary.<\/p>\n Feedback from supervisor\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Truthfully, Ian has been incredibly helpful throughout the entire process. Although he knows my interests lie within other fields, he has been great at providing me with enough motivation to last throughout the whole process. Consistently providing feedback and help wherever possible has been a godsend, and he has always been available whenever I have had any queries. My PhD supervisors \u2013 Sarah and Ivan \u2013 have also been like gold dust. For someone completely out of their depth in this field, it was comforting to have their experience to guide me through the whole process.<\/p>\n If I could do it again I would change\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Personally, if I had freedom of choice, I wouldn\u2019t do plant biology again. That\u2019s not because it isn\u2019t interesting, or because it\u2019s any more difficult than other projects, or that I\u2019ve had issues with the staff, that simply wouldn\u2019t be true. For me, it\u2019s not as inspiring or beneficial to my future career plans. From a research point of view, this experience has furthered my desire to work within academia, just within a field I care about next time.<\/p>\n Any hints or advice?<\/strong><\/p>\n This is the first piece of work where I\u2019ve consistently planned and worked on it piece by piece. Truthfully, I feel as though this is the way forward. My stress levels have been alleviated (as much as they can be for third year) and I have time to sit and think about what I\u2019m writing. Thankfully, I listened to advice and worked on my data analysis over the summer \u2013 I sometimes had data induced headaches. The prospect of writing this eight thousand word document, that you may or may not really care for, can be incredibly overwhelming, but take it piece by piece and acknowledge it can truly make a big difference to your final degree. Sometimes you\u2019ve just got to stick with something, no matter how much of a pain it can be, and this is one of those things I\u2019m afraid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Supervisor and project title: Professor Ian Dodd \u2013 Do root hairs affect the physiological response of barley (Hordeum vulgare ) in drying soil? Why I chose this topic\u2026 To be quite honest, I didn\u2019t. Unfortunately, for my research project, we were required to rank four topics in order of what we\u2019d most like to do. Read more about My Dissertation Experience – Hannah Rudd<\/span>[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dissertations"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/bls-student-blog\/files\/2017\/11\/Hannah-Rudd-Dissertation.jpg?fit=800%2C487&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9dFBD-3k","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/bls-student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/bls-student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/bls-student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/bls-student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/bls-student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/bls-student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/bls-student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/bls-student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/bls-student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/bls-student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/bls-student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}