today's planty goodness
Jul. 1st, 2008 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jinianToday I dissected siliques (maybe 2mm x 12mm) and seeds (about 50 of them fit in previous)
of Arabidopsis. Fun stuff, actually, though one does get a little disoriented after
looking through binocular microscopes for hours on end. (Interspersing games of spider
solitaire helps.)
I hadn't seen plant embryos in person before, so I thought I'd share some of my photos.
None of these actually shows what I want to observe, which is the activity of a particular
transgene, but they're good illustrations of the developmental progression. Also, if you
have ever been twelve, you will snicker at the last one.
[All images are at the same scale.]
Inside the seed of a typical flowering plant is an embryo plus a bunch of stored food. In
Arabidopsis, the fruit fly of the plant lab, the embryo starts out very small and
then consumes the stored food while the seed is developing. So the first stage I found --
actually I was pretty awesome to find it, since it's quite early on -- is just a string of
cells holding a blob, the globular stage embryo.
Next, the embryo starts developing its first leaves, the cotyledons. If you've grown seeds
and seen that first pair of green leaves poke out, that's what these are. This isn't a
great mount of the tissue, but you should be able to make out a sort of kidney-to-heart-
shaped bit in the middle with smooth edges. This is the heart stage embryo.
The end opposite the twin bumps of the cotyledons is turning into the radicle, or embryonic
root. This next stage is the early torpedo stage embryo.
And this last one shows the beginning of the curling up the embryo has to do to stay within
the seed coat, which will be the "bent cotyledon stage" when it's finished. I didn't see
any of those today, so here instead is a shot of what's euphemistically called the late
torpedo stage, but is for all the world a cock and balls.
My smirking increased when it turned out that the endosperm, that stored food in the seed,
starts to be broken down significantly at later developmental stages, so instead of having
to hack out the embryo like I did at heart stage, I had only to cut the seed coat slightly
and the penis-stage embryos would leap forth with dumb enthusiasm!
Also, the Dirt Empire in the front yard expanded southward today, driving the heathen grass
before it! (That is a botany joke. HA HA.) Photos soon, I hope.
of Arabidopsis. Fun stuff, actually, though one does get a little disoriented after
looking through binocular microscopes for hours on end. (Interspersing games of spider
solitaire helps.)
I hadn't seen plant embryos in person before, so I thought I'd share some of my photos.
None of these actually shows what I want to observe, which is the activity of a particular
transgene, but they're good illustrations of the developmental progression. Also, if you
have ever been twelve, you will snicker at the last one.
[All images are at the same scale.]
Inside the seed of a typical flowering plant is an embryo plus a bunch of stored food. In
Arabidopsis, the fruit fly of the plant lab, the embryo starts out very small and
then consumes the stored food while the seed is developing. So the first stage I found --
actually I was pretty awesome to find it, since it's quite early on -- is just a string of
cells holding a blob, the globular stage embryo.
Next, the embryo starts developing its first leaves, the cotyledons. If you've grown seeds
and seen that first pair of green leaves poke out, that's what these are. This isn't a
great mount of the tissue, but you should be able to make out a sort of kidney-to-heart-
shaped bit in the middle with smooth edges. This is the heart stage embryo.
The end opposite the twin bumps of the cotyledons is turning into the radicle, or embryonic
root. This next stage is the early torpedo stage embryo.
And this last one shows the beginning of the curling up the embryo has to do to stay within
the seed coat, which will be the "bent cotyledon stage" when it's finished. I didn't see
any of those today, so here instead is a shot of what's euphemistically called the late
torpedo stage, but is for all the world a cock and balls.
My smirking increased when it turned out that the endosperm, that stored food in the seed,
starts to be broken down significantly at later developmental stages, so instead of having
to hack out the embryo like I did at heart stage, I had only to cut the seed coat slightly
and the penis-stage embryos would leap forth with dumb enthusiasm!
Also, the Dirt Empire in the front yard expanded southward today, driving the heathen grass
before it! (That is a botany joke. HA HA.) Photos soon, I hope.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 04:49 pm (UTC)Richard's comment was "Yep, ANOTHER planet of penis creatures", which probably requires some context (http://cad-comic.com/comics/20080627.jpg).
no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 10:26 pm (UTC)