Different Concentrations of Nicotine Have No Effect on the Heart Rate of Daphnia magna

Abstract

Heart disease is an ever-prevalent cause of death among the human population, due to many causes related to the frequency of heart palpitations. Studies have shown that this damage is irreversible, however, the development of synthetic genetically engineered cardiac muscles cells that don’t interact with nicotine could lower the risk of death. In this experiment, we tested the relationship between concentrations of nicotine solution and the heart rate of Daphnia magna. In order to test this, we measured the frequency of heart beats in D. magna after adding different concentrations of nicotine to a depression slide containing D. magna. We expected a decrease in the heart rate of D. magna exposed to a higher concentration of nicotine, which would prove useful in exploring the field of genetically engineered cardiac muscles cells due to the strong similarities between D. magna and human hearts.