Category Archives: RCW

RCW: Day 1

RCW: Day 0

Notice for this trial there is no sample with no seeds. Here’s some nomenclature for you:

  • rodi – Easypure RoDI water purified in the lab
  • chtm –  deionized water produced in house at CHTM
  • smb – purchased commerical water from Sigma that is molecular biology grade
  • stc – purchased commerical water from Sigma that is tissue culture grade
  • h – havanna tobacco seeds
  • vg – virginia gold #1 tobacco seeds

RCW: Setup Part 2

At 11:30am MST I removed the samples from the refrigerator and sealed them with vacuum grease (see Experiment Product Page). This step is always so time consuming and I would really like to figure out a better way to do this. I basically use a small cylindrical tool (it’s a plastic scraper tool for plating cells) and just smear the grease all over the interface between the top and bottom of the analyslide.

After applying the sealant, I perturb the dish enough so that most of the seeds end up in the middle of the sample. This involves me shaking the “slide” around until I feel I have a good distribution in the viewable area of the dish.
I’ll make a video of my methods and put it on BenchFly when I get some extra hands in the lab. Hopefully that will clear things up.

Pictures of Day 0 seeds to come in about 30 minutes.

RC6 DI Water: Setup Part 1

It’s time to track seed germination, and eventually growth rate (once we get some automation software going), and that means another Repeating Crumley style experiment. I really don’t like calling it that because I’m no longer repeating Crumley, but the fact remains the experimental setup is identical so I’m still going to refer to it as the RC experiments. This time I’m doing only DI water (our commercial waters compared against building purified waters), hence naming it RC6 DI Water and categorizing it RCW. Ok with that said lets get into the setup:

  1. 8 analyslides (see Experiment Product Page on top) contain 30-40 seeds of one of two different types. Either Virginia Gold #1 or Havanna type tobacco seeds. Each slide contains one of four different water origins (CHTM or RoDI purified or Sigma purchased Molecular Biology pure or Tissue Culture pure). So there is 1 seed type for each water type (hence the 8 samples). I feel like I didn’t explain that well…
  2. I poured VG#1 seeds into one of four different analyslides, then poured the Havanna seeds into the four other samples.
  3. I then pipetted 6mL of each water type into each of the slides.
  4. I closed the slides by pressing the top onto the bottom around the rim of the slide.
  5. I then put the slides into the fridge to synchronize growth.

Tomorrow I will remove the samples, seal them with vaccuum grease, and then take day 0 pictures.