A grindy week. Certainly an exaggeration to say there were a thousand natural shocks—even a dozen is not quantitative; but that’s what it felt like. There was actual Shakespeare tho: Last night, we saw the Birmingham Conservatoire’s production of Much Ado About Nothing; hilarious from curtain to curtain. And there was Liszt. OK, a diszt-claimer–I don’t really like Liszt. Still, I went along to the free lunchtime concert: a lecture-recital given by the energetic and earnest Scottish pianist, Kenneth Hamilton (Fig. 1). I tried but holding on to the torrent of sound felt like grabbing eels in a barrel. 

On the science side, some of the shocks were institutional. I spent 90 min at the beginning of the week filling out the safety form so I could order sodium chlorite (not chloride—good old table salt—but the chlorite, a relative of bleach). I need this caustic compound to isolate xylem for making a standard for quantitative polarized light microscopy. I was chuffed because our safety officer approved the form at first pass; but, on Friday I discovered that the order was pending and after chasing it for a while all I could learn was that the order seems to have been banished to administrative limbo and no one knows how to help. 

Some of the shocks were psychological: I have a manuscript to work on. In fact, I have a manuscript I should have been finished with months ago. To be fair, part of the delay happened because we decided to get more data. But I think that is mainly an excuse. I have reached the Discussion. During the past week, with not much on in the lab, I spent a lot of time writing and deleting one sentence after another. 

Biological shocks too: I inspected the set of twisting genotypes I plated the week before. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the exemplar of right-handed twisting I was expecting to feature on this project, turns out to be unsuitable. Fortunately—if at the last minute—I had thrown seed of a few other lines in my suitcase. These had been bulked up in 2001 or thereabouts; would they even germinate? Yes, they did. Good as new. And they all twisted; certainly better than that balky tua6. But here comes the shock. I scanned the surface of the roots, starting at the tip and going up toward the shoot, for centimeters: Here and there, the root was straight, not twisted. Every genotype had little gaps in their twistiness. I had thought twisting was constant, like growth itself. It isn’t, with as yet unclear implications for the project.

Some shocks were accidental. There was the Thursday delivery of the repaired big-screen TV: to be returned after lunch, the repair person needed help carrying it up to our third floor flat. I stayed home that day, pretending to work on the Discussion. I received another shock the week before last, late on Friday, when I went to pour plates: The box where I have been getting the plates was empty. As it happens I use a certain kind of large square plates (see Fig. 1 here) that only a few other labs use. On Monday of this past week, the order for more plates was placed (fortunately, I did not have to place it!). No plating for a while; no excuses to avoid Discussing. Happily the plates are a normal item and they arrived Wednesday. 

With the new plates, I plated again that set of genotypes only this time I plated them on top of the agar. For the project, and the inspection described above, I grow the roots inside the agar. This makes them grow straight as a plumb lines and their twist is axial, like a narwhal tusk (Fig. 2). Axiality is helpful for biomechanics; more than that, compared on top of the agar, images of the roots inside the agar are better for kinematic analysis. But. When these genotypes grow on top of the agar, they grow at an angle from the vertical. Growing at an angle (in contrast to the usual growth straight down) is called skewing and makes a handy way to screen for mutants with this behavior. The trajectory of the root is skewed because the twisting motion causes the root rotate on top of the agar, displacing the tip to left or right, while gravitropism opposes the deflection, bringing the tip back towards vertical. The stronger the twist, the larger is the angle of skew. Lines with intrinsic left-handed twisting skew to the right and vice versa. 

I want to see how constant the skew line is. I believe this will tell me two things. First, how does twisting change with root age. Maybe as the root ages, it will twist more and more or less and less? Determining whether such changes occur and if so documenting them will help me find a good time for imaging. Second, how regular is the twist? The more twisting is interrupted by periods of non-twisting, the more gravitropism will succeed in making the tip turn downwards. This would give rise to a wiggly root. I am hoping that in this way I can evaluate the constancy of twisting and see to what extent any lack of constancy differs among genotypes. Maybe next week will be less … Galvanic.