Hello readers! Have you missed me? I hope so, smile. I stopped posting about my week in the lab because there wasn’t one. When I did at last get stuck into the lab, the moment the spring semester ended, I dismantled it. Put things on a cart and rolled it down long corridors and up in the elevator, unloading in a new space. Cartload after cartload. Just about every test-tube and its cousin was covered in dust and the idea of writing about clouds of dust just made me sneeze. Eventually, as it does, the dust did settle. I am in gleaming space, with big windows and functional air control. Nevertheless, having found good spots for the test-tubes and their cousins, I did not get any of them dirty, but instead I retreated to my office where I wrote a paper and a grant proposal. I considered blogging about the weekly wrangling of paragraphs. It seemed too abstract.

But now, the shiny laboratory beckons. The oscillations within the root’s growth zone, a favorite subject (e.g. here), are to the fore. As is the cell wall. Not only the collaboration with Joseph Hill at Penn State looking at fiber cell walls where one or more cellulose synthase is inactive (see here ) but also a new collaboration with Taka Hayashi from Tokyo Agriculture University looking at cell walls in poplar where the production of xyloglucan has been turned up or turned down. Fun times! Stay tuned…