Biology

I know I've had little to post recently because everything I'm currently working on is top-secret. I don't really think anyone in my family reads this, but there is a link to it on my etsy page, which I've made most people look at, so you never know.

For eye candy then I thought I'd post some pictures from my Cell Biology Lab from last year. I certainly hope that there is nothing wrong with me posting these. My lab partner and I took them, under the guidance of Dr. Malcolm Brown, who is an insanely smart guy. The things I was able to see in that class were really amazing. Its one thing to have access to a picture of something tiny, but another to see it for yourself through a microscope. Although the things I make do have a certain quality of chaos to them, they are very much inspired by the geometric and modular way that nature is made up.

This is a Tillandsia scale as viewed through a polarized light filter with a compensator. Tillandsia is the ball moss plant that you see growing on trees and power lines. If you look closely they appear to be covered in a white powder. The power is actually scales that trap water for the plant. This is what the look like. The colors are representative of the arrangement of the cellulose molecules that make up the scale.

This picture (no, I'm sorry photomicrograph) is also a tillandsia scale but this time treated with GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein--it is what it sounds like) connected to CBP ( Cellulose Binding Protein-- also aptly named). Every once in a while there will be a news story about how scientists have made a glowing green pig, or engineered a blue rose, or something else that seems completely useless to the general public. I'm fairly certain that the glowing pig thing had something to do with GFP, which is probably one of the greatest advancements in Molecular Biology to happen in the last decade because it allows us to see tiny, colorless things so much easier! Its uses in the lab are various and very useful.

This was the most exciting part of the class for me...They let me not only touch, but actually use an electron microscope. This is a T4 bacteriophage virus. I have to admit, I always had my doubts that these guys actually look like the "lunar lander" with their cute little icosahedral head, spiral body and jointed legs. But behold! that is exactly what this looks like in a blurry-electron-beam-degraded-by-the-time-we-could-click-the-capture-button-way.

I wonder if anyone has ever tried to knit/crochet a replica of a phage virus using its genome as a pattern? I wish I had thought about that about a year ago so I could submit THAT to be my thesis topic (I'm in the kind of free-thinking interdisciplinary honors program that just might have gone for it) .

A quick google search came up with this cool virus-inspired cape:

http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.07/people/caitlin/knitvirus/knitvirus_2.html

But no actual virus, perhaps I shall attempt one once things clear up...

Oh yeah, and I have a dog now too. I found him in the street a couple of weeks ago. He was hit by a car, but is doing all better now. In fact, he's the best dog ever. I love him.

By the shortness of my sentences I can tell I'm getting tired and must rest. My last final is tomorrow night y estoy muy allegra.