Tag Archives: science

GFP – a story of bacterial magic

glowecoli
Expression of GFP in E. coli. The bacteria on the right side of the figure have the GFP expression plasmid. Cells were photographed during irradiation with a hand-held long-wave UV source (Photo courtesy Marty Chalfie from the original 1994 Science article and GFP).

You know that saying about parents living through their children.

Well today I was that parent.

Today my son got to do some genetic engineering.

He’s 14.

They hadn’t got much past Mendel when I was 14.

When I was doing microbiology at university, the same university where he was today, we didn’t go much past gram stains.

And here he is at 14 inserting plasmids with Green Flourescent Protein into Escherichia coli.

How cool is that?

(it is very cool… in a geeky-I-wish-I’d-been-a-genetic-engineer kind of way… I mean lets face it usually “glow in the dark” refers to those stars you stick on the ceiling)

Last month I was listening to my NFP* about this cool bunch of genetic engineering students at MIT who had got sick of working with stinky E. coli (it smells like poo) and so engineered in wintergreen so that it would smell nice.

Apart from this, it has proved to be the best for erectile dysfunction is generic cialis canadian . viagra is a medicine which helps completely to bring great erection. Whatever time of the year you go there, the weather conditions will always be http://www.donssite.com/ cialis properien pleasant. Many times we rush to the hospital order levitra with an emergency. Bed wetting and nail biting http://www.donssite.com/OPTICALIILLUSIONS/index.htm viagra no prescription among children are symptoms of nervousness. I played it in the car to my son on the way to school to inspire him to pay attention in science this term.

Little did I know then that a few weeks later he’d be doing it himself.

Damn I wish I was at school again!

Unfortunately, when they get to high-school they don’t seem to want their parents to volunteer as parent helpers on excursions… and the teachers don’t seem to want you either – or at least are very slow at picking up the hint so I offered Hugamuga my video camera to film the lab so I could “be there”.

Strangely he wasn’t keen.

But my boy is a nice kid.

Taking pity on his geeky saddo mother he filmed a bit of it for me on his mate’s phone.

Awwww.

Still, when he boasted over dinner tonight that today he had “made life”, I gently brought him back down with the reminder that I had already done it.

Twice.

And they also sometimes smelled like poo.

*NFP = New Favourite Podcast.

Red or Blue

blue-pill1

Remember this scene from The Matrix?

Take the blue pill and you stay asleep… take the red and wake up to reality?

Why did they choose those colours?

Why blue and red?

It might be based in science.

I was listening to some back-episodes of my new favourite podcast – RadioLab – and one of the stories that stood out for me on the Placebo episode was the story about why the colour of pills is important.

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Same ingredients – very different effect.

So why the anomoly with Italian men?

According to the scientist – it’s because of their football team:
italian_football
The sight of that blue colour excites Italian men so much they can’t sleep… or don’t sleep as well as say other men taking a blue pill.

Interesting.

I wonder if Viagra is more effective in Italy?

Now there’s a research project people!