I am studying a species of evening-primrose that, hence the name, opens at night and closes as the morning progresses. When it opens, it is an almost luminescent white that gradually fades to a deep pink. I was wondering if there were proteins being turned on or shut off during this wilting process that alters the coloration of the profiles, and thought that it might be interesting to try to extract and isolate proteins at different time intervals to see if concentrations changed over time.
Is that something that is feasible? I'm brand new to the idea of protein isolation, so I thought that I would ask.
It's definitely possible, however, depending on the exact conditions in which the plant cells release this protein, you may not be able to do it at Maryville. It can be like brain cells that control your sleep cycle - they may produce melitonin, but only under certain conditions, which can be replicated - just not necessarily in an undergraduate lab. What I would do, is figure out a way to isolate tissue samples from the petals at night when this happens, keep the samples in the same condition as when you harvested them and run an SD page on them.
If you don't know what proteins (or transcripts) are being turned on or off, it may be a good idea to do microarray first. This seems that a set of genes likely are regulating this process and likely involved circadian clock genes.
But if you know what proteins are involved, I don't see why you can't harvest the tissue at certain times of the day/night and monitor the protein level. Although it is also possible that the change in the protein level precedes the opening/closing of the flower instead of occurring at the same time. So harvesting at the right time might be a factor you need to consider.
Also if you have a growth chamber, you can even manipulate the day and night cycle and monitor the change in the opening/closing of the flowers and correlate this data with the change in protein level as well.
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