Discover how Nanosurf's collaboration with a team of scientists has revolutionized spring constant calibration for ...
Héctor here, your AFM expert at Nanosurf calling out for people to share their Friday afternoon experiments. Today I show you how I study lettuce stomata.
Did you knew that the world production of lettuce per person has been more or less constant for the last 20 years? (Despite the population growing massively during that period of time).
This means that for the foreseeable future, we will have to increase lettuce production, and there is only two ways of doing it, either using more resources, like land, water and energy, or becoming more efficient.
This is why there are people looking at growing lettuce in different environments (e.g. space), or modifying the lettuce itself. In both cases, we need to make sure everything in lettuce works well, and one very important part is the stomata.
We look at stomata before in #fridayAFM, do you remember this?
in fact, I presented some results at the MMC conference last year, did you remember the first fridayAFM happening on a Wednesday?
This week, I presented more results at the Sondes Locales conference in Lyon, and I would like to share with you more information about the stoma in lettuces.
The stoma regulates gas interchange and has the important task of protecting the plant from external agents like bacteria trying to enter the plant. So, for instance, if we genetically modify lettuces and they start to get sick, it might be because the nanomechanical properties of stomata are off and it cannot fully open, or close, or cannot do it as fast as it should.
So, for those researchers working on plants, here is how I image lettuce stomas. Hope you find it useful for your research.
Let's recap. Stomas are important for plants (is part of how they breath). We will need to optimize the production of some relevant plants, like lettuce. If the modifications, either external (i.e. environment), or internal (e.g. genetic modification), affect the stoma and it misbehaves, we need to understand why it misbehaves, that means looking at nanomechanics. Here we saw how to image stomas using Nanosurf's WaveMode, and more interestingly, how to obtain mechanical properties using WaveMode Nanomechanics.
I hope you find this useful, entertaining, and try it yourselves. Please let me know if you use some of this, and as usual, if you have suggestions or requests, don't hesitate to contact me.
Extra, how WaveMode works:
When far from the surface, using the CleanDrive laser to excite the cantilever, the movement of the probe tip is a periodic up and down movement, which we can track from the deflection signal.
When close to the surface, the movement of the cantilever is limited by the surface. This results in a deflection signal that is different than the reference signal captured when the cantilever was free from the surface. How much both signals differ is the amount of force applied to the surface. The feedback mechanism to track the surface topography moves the Z piezo up and down to track the surface and keep the force constant.
In the interaction curve it is possible to see the typical features of a force-distance curve, i.e. snap in and adhesion.
