Hey all,
those who were present and sober enough to remember the morning at Nick's bbq (thanks again, Nick, lots of fun!
) may remember me saying you'd need to PCR what came out of the bredli to ascertain what it had eaten. Some of you may also understand a little better than I do the reasons for it being so funny! Anyway, to those of you who remember, and those who have been teasing me about it since then, and also to anyone else who is interested in PCR, I've coincidentally kept running into PCR related stuff over the past couple of weeks and thought I'd share some pics that may be amusing or perhaps even interesting to some.
In case anyone is interested, PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction. It's a really wonderful piece of technology that allows geneticists to ascertain the presence of certain genetic sequences in very small or degraded DNA samples, which wasn't possible until less than ten years ago (if my memory of the history of genetics serves me). Lately I've been involved in collecting ticks which have been PCRed to detect the presence of certain intracellular bacteria, working with people who are PCRing lizards and snakes (I'm not quite sure why). It's really cool that they can now use a tiny piece of skin, even from an old slough, rather than taking a large blood or tissue sample.
PCR is used a lot on the grasshoppers I'm starting my work on, which will be my main focus for the next 18 months and I just noticed that my new boss's office is about five metres from a PCR lab. I helped myself to a two minute tour of the small lab and I've just stuck a bunch of photos of the lab in my gallery, mainly for the people who find it funny to have a laugh at, but also because there must at least be a small chance that someone will find the inside of a PCR lab interesting. You can't tell from the minimised pictures, but almost everything in the lab had "danger radioactive" or similar on it, which probably explains genetecists' beautiful green glows.
Sorry to post rubbish, but people have been laughing about me and PCR and I thought that since I've coincidentally had a fair bit to do with it lately, I'd give them something solid to laugh at and I figure that anyone who hates reading my ramblings either didn't bother or is now pissed off and deserves it for not ignoring my post
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those who were present and sober enough to remember the morning at Nick's bbq (thanks again, Nick, lots of fun!
) may remember me saying you'd need to PCR what came out of the bredli to ascertain what it had eaten. Some of you may also understand a little better than I do the reasons for it being so funny! Anyway, to those of you who remember, and those who have been teasing me about it since then, and also to anyone else who is interested in PCR, I've coincidentally kept running into PCR related stuff over the past couple of weeks and thought I'd share some pics that may be amusing or perhaps even interesting to some.In case anyone is interested, PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction. It's a really wonderful piece of technology that allows geneticists to ascertain the presence of certain genetic sequences in very small or degraded DNA samples, which wasn't possible until less than ten years ago (if my memory of the history of genetics serves me). Lately I've been involved in collecting ticks which have been PCRed to detect the presence of certain intracellular bacteria, working with people who are PCRing lizards and snakes (I'm not quite sure why). It's really cool that they can now use a tiny piece of skin, even from an old slough, rather than taking a large blood or tissue sample.
PCR is used a lot on the grasshoppers I'm starting my work on, which will be my main focus for the next 18 months and I just noticed that my new boss's office is about five metres from a PCR lab. I helped myself to a two minute tour of the small lab and I've just stuck a bunch of photos of the lab in my gallery, mainly for the people who find it funny to have a laugh at, but also because there must at least be a small chance that someone will find the inside of a PCR lab interesting. You can't tell from the minimised pictures, but almost everything in the lab had "danger radioactive" or similar on it, which probably explains genetecists' beautiful green glows.
Sorry to post rubbish, but people have been laughing about me and PCR and I thought that since I've coincidentally had a fair bit to do with it lately, I'd give them something solid to laugh at and I figure that anyone who hates reading my ramblings either didn't bother or is now pissed off and deserves it for not ignoring my post
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