An experiment gone wrong
Although they are hidden below ground, roots are responsible for many critical functions of the plant. Roots absorb nutrients and water from the soil, they can serve to store excess sugars and starch, and they are important for anchoring the plant to the ground, giving it structure and stability.⠀
Below you can see a microscopy image of a flax root. It is supposed to be an in situ RNA hybridization negative control. In situ RNA hybridization is when you make a probe molecule of nucleic acids labelled with a dye, and you mix it with (in this case) tissue from flax roots, and your probe molecule should bind to its matching RNA molecule in the cell. Sounds simple, right? Well this experiment was using a probe that is not supposed to match anything in the root cells at all. So the expected results would be to see no dye at all. This type of experiment is called a negative control, it is used to make sure your experiment is working accurately. Unfortunately this control proved that there was a lot of non-specific binding, meaning nothing could be scientifically concluded from this experiment.