Be Curious. Try New Things

Abstract Not much is needed to get started in experimental hemostasis research. If you have not done so yet, just go to your institution's lab and ask whether you can use some of their equipment: pipette, centrifuge, microplate reader, and CaCl2, that's basically all you need. Then, let someone draw a vial of your blood and here you go, with your first blood clotting experiment. But, wait! One thing is still missing. To perform your first assay, you are advised to use a reagent that initiates clotting of your blood sample. Interested in contact activation? Wondering whether the presence of coagulation factor (F) XII really is unimportant (as indicated by the fact that a complete deficiency of FXII does not lead to bleeding)? Then do it the way Christian Kastrup and his research group did.1 Grab your backpack and collect soil and clay in the nearby countryside. Back in the lab, crush the collected soil and clay samples and add a small amount of each sample to your aliquoted blood plasma sample, then add CaCl2, and measure the plasma clotting time on the microplate reader (do not forget the negative control, i.e., the addition of buffer to plasma instead of soil or clay sample). Likely, you will detect a massive reduction of the plasma clotting time when adding soil or clay (which you may also call “dirt”) to the recalcified aliquoted plasma samples. Doing so, you just have found further evidence for the dirty-wound hypothesis of coagulation function as proposed by Brian Cooley recently.2 He explained that dirt is an unavoidable ingredient of open wounds of land-based animals, and that coagulation is activated by dirt via FXII. Still believe that FXII is irrelevant? Interesting, isn't it? Before you swing the pipette, you might also be inspired by the exciting research presented in this theme issue of Hämostaseologie entitled “Coagulation Diagnostics beyond Routine.”