BIOL 335

The Child is father of the Man

The Child is father of the Man dnaSo just to assuage and allay fears of my dis­ap­pear­ance (reports of my kid­nap­ping have been greatly exag­ger­ated), I wanted to share with every­one some­thing that has provided some lev­ity as my BIOL 335 winds to a close.

Geneticists are, as most people, gen­er­ally good-​natured and con­vivial. As such, one can expect some whim­sic­al­ity in the work of genet­i­cists. This is the case! In case you weren’t aware, not all genes have bor­ing names; many genet­i­cists take great pride in cre­at­ing amus­ing gene names (par­tic­u­larly those who study Drosophila melano­gaster).

Here are a few that made me laugh today as I browsed the inter­net dur­ing class:

  • tin­man (embryos have no hearts)
  • lili­pu­tian (small)
  • dread­locks (denticle pat­tern resembles dreadlocks)
  • inebri­ated (uncoordinated)
  • cheap date (increased sens­it­iv­ity to alcohol)
  • meth­u­se­lah (longer lifespan)
  • tribbles (some cells divide uncontrollably)
  • mag­gie (devel­op­ment has been arres­ted i.e. Maggie Simpson)
  • grim and reaper (medi­ate apoptosis)
  • asp and cleo­patra (mutant cleo protein’s inter­ac­tion with asp pro­tein is lethal; Cleopatra sup­posedly died from an asp bite)
  • amon­til­lado (unable to hatch, walled-​in alive like Fortunado from Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”)
  • fruity (males aren’t inter­ested in females)
  • swiss cheese (brain has many holes)
  • ham­let (affects devel­op­ment of cells des­cen­ded from IIB (“to be…”))
  • ken and bar­bie (male and females lack external genitalia)
  • INDY aka i’m not dead yet (mutants with twice the nor­mal lifespan, ref­er­ence to Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
  • buffy (pro-​survival pro­tein that inhib­its apoptosis)
  • coitus inter­rup­tus (males cop­u­late for 12 minutes, rather than the usual 20)
  • tudor (don’t pro­duce progeny)
  • clark kent (encodes the Superman protein)
  • ether a go-​go (mutants shake their legs wildly under the influ­ence of anesthesia)

At least these genes had reas­ons for their nomen­clature. Some genes are named rather haphaz­ardly, much to the amuse­ment of genet­i­cists and the chag­rin of laypersons:

  • sonic hedge­hog (and its cous­ins desert hedge­hog and indian hedge­hog)
  • Bride of sev­en­less
  • lun­atic fringe
  • faint saus­age
  • fear of intim­acy
  • groucho
  • smurf
  • sex lethal
  • death exe­cu­tioner Bcl-​2

This makes me want to dis­cover a gene so badly. What sorts of amus­ing names can you come up with?

Sources:

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 BIOL 335 5 Comments

They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind

It’s been a crazy little while lately so hence the reduced blog posts. I like to ima­gine that means my read­ers (how­ever few of you there are) must be read­ing and re-​reading my posts. That is good!

In not-​so-​live-​breaking news, I made it into my two desired majors: Cell Biology & Genetics and English. Really, I could do just one and prob­ably do fine…but I’m going to do both, because I can. Carpe diem and all, I’m going to be darned if I don’t get to prove my pro­fi­ciency in a wide and dis­par­ate pleth­ora of aca­demic disciplines!

The rain on Monday and Tuesday really put me into a blah mood; I col­lapsed on the bus into a semi-​comatose state much to the dis­may of people who sat next to me. I tend to do that a lot now; sleep debt repay­ments on the bus. What a rever­sion to my winter pattern!

Les Misérables on July 17th with C and A! How excit­ing. I’ve been listen­ing to the soundtrack on Youtube lately and I’m sure it will be great. I keep telling myself what Dory told her­self in Finding Nemo, just keep swimming.

Somehow I’ll make it through BIOL 335 and AMS Minischool.

Addendum: Contemplating writ­ing short story/​short film to spice up my rather ordin­ary life. Will assuredly write about extraordin­ary events hap­pen­ing to an ordin­ary prot­ag­on­ist. Suggestions?

Thursday, July 9th, 2009 BIOL, BIOL 335, ENGL, Minischool, Travel No Comments

To the waters and the wild

BIOL 335 has really per­plexed me; I’m not quite sure what we’re sup­posed to know and what we’re not. It seems a little wishy-​washy but I sup­pose that’s because I had BIOL 334 right before this. If you bump into me, feel free to ask me about bac­terial gene trans­fer, the lac operon or recom­bin­ant gene technology.

“Children of the Earth” has star­ted air­ing in Britain so of course I can’t wait for the North American view­ings. I’m halfway through the first episode…and wow! It’s incred­ible. No won­der I love Torchwood. (Unfortunately, Toshiko, my tele­vi­sion girl­friend is dead so that’s a bit of a downer.)

I for­got to post my courses here so here is the list!

  • ANAT 390 001
  • BIOC 302 202
  • BIOC 302 T56
  • BIOL 240 1D1
  • BIOL 300 101
  • BIOL 300 L08
  • BIOL 304 102
  • BIOL 304 L07
  • BIOL 337 2W2
  • BIOL 360 L01
  • BIOL 361 101
  • BIOL 362 201
  • ENGL 304A
  • ENGL 312A 0011
  • ENGL 348A 005
  • ENGL 357K 002
  • ENGL 409A 001
  1. I’m on the wait­ing list for this course due to some issues with the SSC not recog­niz­ing me as an English Literature major. How unfor­tu­nate! But I’ll get in, I know it! ↩
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 ANAT 390, BIOC 302, BIOL 240, BIOL 300, BIOL 304, BIOL 334, BIOL 335, BIOL 337, BIOL 360, BIOL 361, BIOL 362, ENGL 304, ENGL 312, ENGL 348, ENGL 357, ENGL 409, Television 5 Comments

Well, if that’s love, it comes at much too high a cost

BIOL 335 is well under­way now, we’re a quarter of the way through! Nothing left to do but plough on. Thus far, it’s been about bac­terial genet­ics and the lac operon but I sus­pect it will get tougher.

Construction going on in the SUB with the AMS ser­vices offices so I’ll be dis­placed for the next 2–3 weeks (hope­fully not more). How unfor­tu­nate! Alas, those from above gave the orders so my hands were tied.

More to the point, I’ve suc­cess­ful registered for Blogathon 2009 with my char­ity, the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation. If you’re read­ing this, I implore you to please either register for Blogathon your­self or to donate a min­imal amount (any­thing is bet­ter than noth­ing) to my char­ity. If you can’t (due to whatever reason) do either of these, please help me spread the word about Blogathon, my efforts and the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation. (You will totally earn karma points, redeem­able in the far future!)

If you don’t like my cause (for whatever reason) there are so many causes being rep­res­en­ted at Blogathon this year – Kevin is sup­port­ing the hungry with the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society while Alex and Matthew are sup­port­ing the Canadian Mental Health Association.

Of course, I’m going to be biased towards my own cause! Here are some facts that the people at BCCHF were kind enough to provide me about the BC Children’s Hospital:

  • the only pedi­at­ric spe­cialty hos­pital to treat ser­i­ously ill and injured chil­dren in BC
  • serves close to one mil­lion chil­dren in BC and the Yukon
  • serves the largest pop­u­la­tion of chil­dren in Canada
  • a mem­ber of the Woodmark Group, a net­work of 24 lead­ing pedi­at­ric hos­pit­als in North America
  • a Centre for International Child Health, coördin­at­ing patient care, train­ing, edu­ca­tion and research part­ner­ships with pedi­at­ric hos­pit­als around the world
  • an aver­age of 463 sick and injured chil­dren receive care every day at BC Children’s Hospital (not count­ing long-​term patients)

That really gives you an ink­ling into the huge dif­fer­ence that the BC Children’s Hospital makes to the lives of so many. Give what you can and pos­sibly help save a life.

To those doing Blogathon, I salute you!

Friday, July 3rd, 2009 BIOL 335, Minischool No Comments

Till human voices wake us, and we drown

Considering that I’m think­ing of ways I can feas­ibly com­plete Blogathon while main­tain­ing san­ity, I’m going ahead and shame­lessly steal­ing Phoebe’s idea for a post and ask any­one read­ing this to sub­mit ques­tions they’d like to see answered. Ask any­thing – any­thing – and everything you’ve ever wanted to know about me but were too shy to ask. I’ll be answer­ing them dur­ing Blogathon (replete, pos­sibly, with pictures!).

Just as a quick chal­lenge for any­one who reg­u­larly reads this – have you all figured out where the blog post titles come from? And have you figured out where each one is sourced? Feel free to go check the archives to see how many you can name off the top of your head.

BIOL 335 starts tomor­row so my adven­tures end here.

Sunday, June 28th, 2009 BIOL 335, Literature, Technology 5 Comments

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