Hey, I’m teaching a genetics class this term, and someone is taking one. I’m going to be spending part of my day setting up flies for an upcoming lab…this looks awfully familiar.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
What a great description on Premenopaws of the genetics class!
I totally LOVE Angie of Premenapaws! We’ve been reading each other for quite a while now and it is always a delight.
Here is someone who should know better who might need a class or two in genetics.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2570067,00.html
“A MUSLIM doctors’ leader has provoked an outcry by urging British Muslims not to vaccinate their children against diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella because it is “un-Islamic”.
Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, is telling Muslims that almost all vaccines contain products derived from animal and human tissue, which make them “haram”, or unlawful for Muslims to take.”
This guy is a criminal and should be fired immediately for incompetence.
“Katme, a psychiatrist who has worked in the National Health Service for 15 years, wields influence as the head of one of only two national Islamic medical organisations as well as being a member of the Muslim Council of Britain. Moderate Muslims are concerned at the potential impact because other Islamic doctors will have to confirm vaccines are derived from animal and human products.”
I did genetics in my first year of a microbiology degree. Moving on to Cell Biology, Microbial world and Physiology B for Semester B of year 2. Can’t wait :-D
I hated working with fruit flies in my devo bio lab; they were too tiny and hard to handle, plus it was impossible for our untrained eyes to pick out all the subtle mutant phenotypes we were supposed to. I liked the zebrafishies much more.
Sometimes… sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night sreaming “the flies! I’ve got to check on the flies!” Before I remember that that was a long time ago, and I do not need to take care of the flies anymore…
(sometimes… sometimes, I would leave them in the freezer a little too long…)
Ah, that first genetics lab :^)
I actually spent my senior year working 10-20 hours per week in a working genetics research lab at the University of Washington.
Angie’s discourse raised a lot of strangely happy memories LOL! Except that in our day we didn’t mess with Flynap or put ethanol in our morgues. We used good old ether, and drowned the millions of flies we discarded per week in lovely motor oil ;^) And we were a large-scale fly operation. No intant medium for us. Our lab had a special recipe prepared via autoclave–looked like sort of over-cooked butterscotch pudding. And we kept our flies in little half-pint bottles, not tubes.
I recall that one of the jobs I spent way too many hours doing was removing the cotton stoppers on tray after tray of those little bottles, using the blunt end of a probe to shove a kimwipe down into the medium, then reinserting the cotton stopper. The kimwipe provided clean, dry klinging and crawling space for the little beasties. Boy, did I get fast at that job LOL! Two-handed, too, which was an achievement for this strongly right-handed individual.
And I spent even more hours staring through dissecting scopes at etherized flies, separating out the virgins for upcoming matings. Good thing it isn’t so easy to tell with humans LOL!
Ah, the sweet memories of my youth.
Lynn