Red Onion Cells

Dec 31, 2015 • 6:27 AM UTC

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140x Magnification

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pmooney3

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A thin section of a red onion (one layer beneath the outermost layer) was sandwiched between two layers of transparent packing tape. Next, the onion was imaged with a FoldScope that was equipped with a low-magnification (140x) lens, LED light module, and iPhone (5) camera. In this manner, it was possible to observe individual onion cells (see attached images). Interestingly, many of these onion cells contained small circular structures that were located near the center of the cell. I suspect that they may be nuclei. An additional image of a candidate nuclei was acquired using a high-magnification (500x) lens. In the future, it would be interesting to use a nuclei-specific stain in order to determine if the small circular structures are indeed nuclei. Furthermore, it would be interesting to see if image quality might be increased by using only a single layer of transparent packing tape.