The onion and the student: a fruitful combination!

SCIENTIFIC experimentation; CELL morphology; BIOLOGY education in universities & colleges

A set of exercises aimed at the discovery of basic structures and functions of living cells are described. The exercises are intended for university students and can be carried out in one intensive day. The students will learn that: the cell wall has a specific architecture of cellulose -- the fibrillar component of the cell wall which is anisotropic in its structural organisation; Microtubules form distinct parallel arrays in the vicinity of the plasma membrane and this orientation is reflected in the architecture of the cell wall; The plasma membrane is intimately linked to the cell wall at hundreds of spots per cell; The endoplasmic reticulum forms a network close to the cell membrane. This becomes very clear at cell membrane/cell wall linkage sites during plasmolysis. Mitochondria move very actively in the cell, as do other small organelles, plastids, and Golgi bodies. This movement is based on the presence of an elaborate actin filament network, and involves the activity of myosin-type molecular motors on the surface of the organelles. The nucleus has areas of high RNA content (nucleoli) and is held in place by a dense net of microtubules and actin filaments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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