Cells, Trees and ESF (Written by Nora, Neona and Marina)

This year, Neona and Nora’s science class was learning about plant and animal cells. To get a better understanding of plant cells we visited E.S.F. (Environmental Science and Forestry.) We went there for two and a half hours and in that time we visited two different labs. 

The first one we went to was Chuck and Linda’s lab. They talked about the research they were doing. Linda has been working on putting new genes into American Chestnut tree for fifteen years to see if it can withstand blight (a fungus that has been killing these types of trees for a very long time.) She showed all of the different plants they had in the lab. They had at least five hundred American Chestnut trees in a nutrient solution called tissue culture. 

Linda showed us these cool machines (Laminar flow hoods) that had filters on the top and the side so that dirty air goes in the top and out the side. This is so that when people are working at the desk the experiments don’t get contaminated. When you breath in the clean air you can really tell the difference between the air. 

Then Linda gave us some hands on things to do. She showed us how to take embryos off calluses and how to take a callus off of the bottom of a plant. When we were working on the embryos we had to work under a microscope, that is partly what made the task hard to do. Taking the embryos off was difficult because they are so small it’s very hard to pluck them off. The shoots were easier because all we had to do was cut the leaves off and cut the shoot into three pieces to put into tissue culture to grow more trees. Doing this is part of Linda’s job. She has to do this because if she didn’t the trees would die.

After we were done with those tasks we went down to Marina’s Dad’s (John) lab. John’s lab was different than Linda’s. They both study trees but John studies the tree when it’s older and looks at the rings of the trees. He also goes to different places and sees where the trees were most prominent. It was very exciting. We got to look at the rings of trees and he showed us how to take a part of the tree without cutting it down. He

talked about what the rings meant. The rings show when the tree has had a rough year and when there was a lot of water. They also show when the tree was healthy and getting nutrients.

It was a fun and educational trip!