I have not taken a long dive off the edge of the universe and plunged into the great bibblety.

You’d think that since school ended in early May, I’d have been relaxing, catching up with friends, taking photos, posting on my blog. You’d be wrong.

Instead, I’ve been doing this:

And this:

And lots of these:

While the kitties have mostly been doing this:

I’m so envious.

I suppose I should explain a bit about my work at the lab. I’m volunteering with a grad student in the Cell & Systems Biology department at the university. Like last year’s volunteer gig, I do a lot of planting. I don’t get to play with photogenic caterpillars, but I do get to be nursemaid to a lot of bacteria, which has its charms. I’m also doing a lot more molecular work. In brief, the lab studies interactions between several strains of the pseudomonas syringae bacteria (a plant pathogen, totally harmless to humans) and their plant hosts. The hosts are in the family brassicaceae, which includes a number of agriculturally significant plants like radish, cabbage, bok choi, mustard  and turnip, among others. Since the plant hosts and the bacteria have a long evolutionary history together, they have developed a whole mess of ways to interact with each other on a molecular level. Most of these involve the bacteria making proteins which hijack the plant’s cytoskeleton or it’s transcription machinery, and the plant making proteins which recognize the bacterial proteins and start cascades that shut down that area of the plant, killing all the affected cells. I won’t get into the details, because my understanding of the subject is not thorough enough to give a lay person a good understanding of the subject (but I promise I’m working on that and will try to come up with a good succinct explanation), and because it’s probably incredibly dull for anyone who isn’t studying this, but let me assure you that this is all Cool Beans and Very Interesting Stuff. In fact, let me show you what happens when a plant gets good at recognizing a bacterial strain:

See? Cool Beans, as promised.

In between lab sessions, I’ve been doing some pottery, attending engagement hoedowns, bridal showers and weddings (okay, only one of each), and organizing a baby shower. Expect another post or two for that stuff soon!

An entertaining day at the lab, and I even remembered to bring my camera.  Lucky you!

The scene: a pile of blue nitrile gloves, a compound microscope, a dissecting microscope, various containers and tools.  Silence at first, but soon the horrorshow begins.

…a heap of bloated corpses, red eyes bulging, the tattered remains of females with abdomens torn asunder, tiny white ovaries littered about…

Take a closer look.

Hours later, the rent ovaries hacked apart and stained, the prize: one gorgeous, perfectly-formed late-stage oocyte.

Finally, a glimpse of what might have been - two live (but not for long) embryos.  The first, barely 2 hours old, is beginning the process of forming germ cells, the basis of the next generation.  The second is perhaps a sibling, older and more developed, with little baby Drosophila guts already forming.

Too bad about that whole drowning thing.  Sorry, fruit flies.

• For some reason I seem to be having trouble getting my homework done.
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I had a bio lab that was all about microscopy.  That probably sounds boring.  If it weren’t for the fact that I’m in the research-stream version of my cell and developmental biology class, it probably would have been.  As it happens, though, I am.  The awesome thing about being in the research stream is that you have really small classes, and Really Sweet Toys.  While the other classes have to use the crappy old microscopes, we get to use Totally Freaking Awesome microscopes.  Where they get an old jury-rigged TV setup for fluorescence microscopy, we get Real Lab Equipment.  Bliss, I tell you.  Sheer bliss.  So anyway, my lab partner and I spent a good portion of our morning geeking out over the gear.

Okay, so we were only looking at tomato leaves (and the fine hairs on the stems), but it was still pretty nice to work with microscopes that you can actually adjust properly.  Refreshing.  Also, it is rumoured that in a later lab this term, we get to remove the ovaries from a female Drosophila melanogaster, commonly known as a fruit fly.  I have no idea how that’s going to work, but I’m hoping for a Honey-I-Shrunk-The-Kids sort of scenario.

In pottery news, I have a couple of pieces from last week to show off:

Jonathan immediately pointed out that the shape of the handle is reminiscent of the Pompeii mummies, so this shall henceforth be known as the Pompeii mug.  I can’t unsee it.

The interesting thing about this simple yellow cup is that I used no yellow glazes on it.  The yellow colour is actually from an interaction between two brown glazes.  It’s also (in my opinion) a nicer colour than any of the actual yellow glazes.

I learned a new skill tonight, too - I trimmed my first foot:

I’m so pleased with it that I think from now on I’ll be trimming all of my wheel-thrown pieces.  It makes such a big difference to the look of the piece.

Finally, I tried my hand at a larger bowl than any I’d attempted before.  The elbow got a bit thin, though, and it started to collapse.  I managed to collar it just enough to rescue the piece, but it’s a bit lopsided.  Still, I liked it well enough to set it aside to be trimmed next week.