Mitosis in Garlic

[Fuzzyduck]

Hi,
We've grown garlic roots to do the mitosis experiment, but we only have methylene blue or iodine stains. Will methylene blue work instead of toledine blue? We don't have enough time to order in the latter. Thanks in advance.

 

[Snailo]

Do you have acetic orcein? That's what we used to use before switching to toluidine. I have a feeling that methylene blue won't stain the right parts of the cells to see mitosis, or it might not be dark enough. It might be worth trialing it if you're desperate though.

 

[Fuzzyduck]

Do you have acetic orcein? That's what we used to use before switching to toluidine. I have a feeling that methylene blue won't stain the right parts of the cells to see mitosis, or it might not be dark enough. It might be worth trialing it if you're desperate though.

Thank you. Trialing it is my next task (just waiting for microscopes to become available).

 

[Wervelwind]

Do you have solid toluidine blue?

 

[Puds]

There's another thread for this about methylene blue

Protocol to observe chromosomes in onion root-tip cells?​

 

[Biobarb]

I always use methylene blue for this. Works a treat!

 

[Fuzzyduck]

Thanks for your replies. Methylene blue does work, but not how the teacher wants it to!! But until our order comes in that's the only option they have. Nice experiment though, cells are really easy to see.

 

[FormerBrewTech]

I've used acetic orcein before and gotten excellent results. If you have a microscope camera it might be worth snapping a few example pictures and printing them off, that way if the students fail to find anything they can still practice drawing diagrams and doing the mitotic index calculations

 

[Fuzzyduck]

I've used acetic orcein before and gotten excellent results. If you have a microscope camera it might be worth snapping a few example pictures and printing them off, that way if the students fail to find anything they can still practice drawing diagrams and doing the mitotic index calculations

Thanks. We've got pre-prepared onion mitosis slides, so they'll have to use those if it doesn't work.