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Title: ARS-Media: A spreadsheet tool for calculating media recipes based on ion-specific constraints

Author
item Niedz, Randall

Submitted to: PLOS ONE
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/25/2016
Publication Date: 11/3/2016
Citation: Niedz, R.P. 2016. ARS-Media: A spreadsheet tool for calculating media recipes based on ion-specific constraints. PLoS One. 11(11):e0166025. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0166025.

Interpretive Summary: ARS-Media is an ion solution calculator that uses Microsoft Excel to generate recipes of salts for complex ion mixtures specified by the user. The recipes generated are required for at least 2 types of problems – 1) mineral nutrient studies where ions are treated as statistical factors and, 2) formulation of ecologically and biologically relevant ionic fluid compositions such as from a specific lake, soil, cell, tissue, or organ. The use of ARS-Media is demonstrated with a simple ion-based experiment to determine the effects of substituting Na+ for K+ on the growth of a Valencia sweet orange cell line. The spreadsheet is formula-based and uses no macros because they can sometimes conflict with institutional information technology (IT)security systems.

Technical Abstract: ARS-Media is an ion solution calculator that uses Microsoft Excel to generate recipes of salts for complex ion mixtures specified by the user. Generating salt combinations (recipes) that result in pre-specified target ion values is a linear programming problem. Thus, the recipes are generated using Excel’s Solver add-on. Calculating a mixture of salts to generate exact solutions of complex ionic mixtures is required for at least 2 types of problems – 1) mineral nutrient studies where ions are treated as statistical factors to determine ion-specific effects free of ion confounding and, 2) formulation of ecologically and biologically relevant ionic fluid compositions such as from a specific lake, soil, cell, tissue, or organ. The use of ARS-Media is demonstrated with a simple ion-based experiment to determine the effects of substituting Na+ for K+ on the growth of a Valencia sweet orange nonembryogenic cell line.