To improve chip utilization and experimental efficiency, we attempted to optimize the embedding of wheat anther materials. The improvements include: removing the glumes and retaining the outer glumes to reduce the distance between anthers, and selecting fresh materials; marking a 6×3mm selection area at the bottom of a 17×17×5 mm embedding cassette (the area of the BMK platform chip is 6.8mm×6.8mm), and embedding as much material as possible within this area, which can accommodate two rows, each containing 5 anthers; operating under a stereomicroscope to ensure that all materials are on the same plane.
A reasonable chip design can better utilize the chip area, thereby reducing experimental costs and obtaining more experimental data. For materials with small tissues like wheat anthers, the embedding area is typically designed to be half of the chip area. After cutting to the appropriate position, two cuts are made to repeat the sections on the chip. To ensure the RNA quality of the samples, the embedding block is trimmed, and two cuts are made to adjust the position within the same chip area, while also heating the chip.