Red Bell Pepper Epidermis

This was my first time using the AmScope camera software. I learned a lot, but there's still more I want to do.

Procedure

• Specimen — Capsicum annuum, or bell pepper. I sampled a sweet mini pepper from my grocery store. Bell peppers are in the Solanaceae family, which is commonly known as the nightshade family. Other well-known members of the family are tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, and tobacco.
• Sectioning — I used my forceps to carefully peel pieces of the epidermis off the fruit.
• Photography Equipment — I used the same MD500A lens camera, but used the companion software as well. The difference was incredible! The resolution was much better to begin with, and I was able to adjust sharpness and saturation, target important regions of the image. There are still a few features I wasn't able to figure out, but this basic use has already made a major improvement in my image quality.
• Equipment Notes — The AmScope camera software was tricky to jump into with no prior instruction. I was able to figure out the basics on my own, but I would recommend having the documentation on hand for reference.
• Tips and tricks — For epidermal samples, breaking pieces of the specimen with your hands and gently peeling the parts away from each other usually gives you a spot of hanging epidermis you can grab easily with forceps. This may take a few tries, so make sure you have a large enough specimen!

Observations

• Chromoplasts — These are plastids which contain carotenes or xanthophylls: pigments which give fruits their red, orange, or yellow colors. This bright coloration attracts animals, so that they eat the fruits and disperse the seeds. Chromoplasts transition from chloroplasts as fruit ripens. The droplets of pigment within a chromoplast, called plastoglobuli, are derived from the degraded thylakoid membranes of the chloroplast. Chromoplasts in peppers contain carotene pigments (Crang et al., 2018, p. 90).
• Plasmodesmata — Tiny tunnels through cell walls connecting two cells. The channels are lined with both cells' plasma membranes, and connect the cytoplasm of both cells. These facilitate cell-cell communication in plants, which would be extremely difficult with solid cell walls. One of my favorite things I learned about the plasmodesmata is that the endoplasmic reticulum also goes through the plasmodesmata! This blew my mind, I had never thought it was possible for cells to share organelles with each other, especially not in plants (Crang et al., 2018, pp. 163-164).
• Central vacuole — A membrane-bound organelle primarily used to store water, but also contain water-soluble nutrients and pigments. Anthocyanins are good examples of this. Since anthocyanins are water-soluble, the entire vacuole appears purple! Central vacuoles also serve a structural purpose, since the turgor generated from the water pressure helps hold plants upright.

Areas of Improvement

Although I figured out the basics of the AmScope camera software, there are a few important features I need to practice. Scale bars and anatomical labels are the most pressing, since those will provide necessary context to the viewer. Hopefully I will have a few labeled images soon after perusing the documentation!