Expert: Walter Hintz - 4/3/2011

Question
Hi Doctor, can you give me a quick hand? I'm competing in the Canadian Biology Olympiad, and as one of the top 40 in Canada, I have to complete a series of labs. There is this one plant lab I'm having some trouble with.

I am required to make and stain a wet root slide showing clearly the stages of mitosis (so basically making a slide of the apical meristem) and preferably make it so that the root looks like a root (not a squash). All I have for a chromosome staining dye is methylene blue.

Do you know a procedure that takes less than 15mins that would satisfy these requirements?

*my bio teachers have no clue....*

Answer
There are two ways to prepare onion root tips to observe mitosis and nether one takes 15 minutes
1.If you have slide preparation materials and a microtome you can section and stain the root tips
2. The easiest way is to make a squash slide. With this you still need Hcl and some special stains. Methylene blue will not stain chromosomes
   Google "squash slides for mitosis" an look for Carolina Biol supply web site