Science Songs

For anyone who has ever conducted a screen in science, I don't need to say any more...

Marvelous Scientists!

I stumbled upon this list today which compiles all of the scientists that have featured in the Marvel Universe. I have to agree that Marvel comics has a pretty favourable view of scientists and celebrates them. Pretty much all of their major characters are scientists; Mr Fantastic (that super smart PI), Iron Man (sell-out to industry), The Hulk (postdoc too many) and Spider-man (who is probably the most student/young postdoc- relatable). It's nice that they have this as part of what makes them a hero too and in many cases it's their science that gets them out of trouble (although it's always good to throw a few punches in there too).

Name the biologist - week 14

Here's another old one - so old it's a painting rather than a photograph. I guess that could be a clue in itself. This guy named something that's pretty essential in biology.

As for last week they were the biologists who came up with the one gene-one enzyme hypothesis. George Beadle and Edward Tatum.

Science Songs

I'm sure this song was supposed to be about losing a girl but I was listening to it yesterday and it reminds me a lot of science and getting a PhD or paper. Bear with me and listen carefully...

science pun!

I stumbled upon this image and pun today. I will definitely find opportunities to use the phrase "Drosoph-apocalypse" in the future. Sadly it will probably mean something horribly wrong has happened.

Name the Bioblogist - week 13

So there was a week long absence due to football being a bit busy and uninspired but I've manage to come up with a new one. This is an old school one so I will give you a clue, these two came up with a fairly important hypothesis in genetics/biochemistry.

As for the last installment, "Anonymous" wins again by recognising Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Alexey Olovnikov. In hindsight I should have also included Jack W Szostak too. Anyway they get a mention for their work on Telomerase the enzyme that adds DNA repeats onto telomeres, the ends of chromosomes in vertebrates. It's also been linked to cell ageing which wins it a lot of attention (and is often used as a magic ageing up of human clones in sc-fi)

Surprise

I was thrown off balance today when my PCRs worked. My plan for the afternoon was to start from scratch with new dNTPs, frsh DNA preparation etc so I had to quickly figure out what to do next. The answer turned out to be more PCRs as i need more of the product to do the digestions afterwards.

This puts the KO method ever-so-slightly ahead of the P-element excision. Then again it is possible that I could cross my isogenised (in bred) P-element flies to the transposase next Friday.