Egg Cell Macromolecules Lab

In this lab we asked the question of what macromolecules would be present in different parts of a egg cell. We tested for the macromolecules, protein, monosaccharide carbohydrates, polysaccharide carbohydrates and lipids.

The presence of lipids was tested on an egg membrane and were found to be abundant. The data showed the abundance of lipids because when the membrane was exposed to chemicals, the chemical had an immense color change. This would make sense because the cell membrane is mostly made of lipids.

In the protein test, proteins were found to be prominent in the egg white of the egg cell. When exposed to the chemical that identifies protein presence, the chemical changed color rapidly, indicating that many proteins were present in the egg white. This is logical because the cytoplasm/egg white of a cell is made of proteins to be used as structure, and a food source.

When the egg yolk was tested for macromolecules, the most common macromolecules were monosaccharides. When tested with the chemical the chemical changed from blue to orange, signifying that large amounts of monosaccharide sugars were found in that portion of the egg. It would make sense that sugar would be found in the yolk, because the yolk is where the embryo develops and the sugars provide energy and food.

All but one of the evidences supported our claims. We claimed that proteins would be the most common in egg whites and that lipids would be found in the membrane, but did not hypothesis that the yolk would contain lots of monosaccharides.


While our data largely supported or hypothesis, some errors may have taken place in the procedure. It is possible that some of the transfer pipettes and spoons could have been mixed with different substances while carrying out the procedure. Also, a different person judged each test, possibly skewing results with differing opinions of scaling the color change. These could have caused the data to be invalid, because of inconsistency. To reduce possible errors in future experiments, we can try to be careful of mixing substances and have one person to be the judge of all the chemicals so the data will be consistent.

This lab was preformed to demonstrate where the macromolecules we studied are found in a cell and to deeper the understanding of how they work and what they do. In class we learned about the different types of macromolecules and what they do, and this lab showed how they were present in a cell and why they were in different parts of the cell. This lab taught me how I should carry out a procedure in a lab, because this lab was very messy and that could have been fixed by being more careful. Also, we took to long on the lab and the cleanup process took to long. In the future I will be more focused on doing labs as quickly and efficiently as possible.