I'm back I'm back!!!
Did anyone miss me xD? (cutie version)
See you guys on monday!!! (Enthusiastic version)
5 days only what. What's the big deal? (dao version)
After approximately 125 hours of separation, I'm finally returned to my original learning ground. (act cheem version)
Okay, that's damn lame. Fine. Well, I finally finished the courses and hope someone missed me but its alright because i would get to see you guys on monday anyway, after all, we've only been separated for 5 days which is no big deal (holidays were longer) and I'm going to be back in my pinky school soon!
Zaiededed.
This 3 days in Biopolis is fun fun fun! We're "trained" in a building named 'Proteos' which focuses mainly on DNA! Learned ALOT ALOT of things. The misconception of 'mutant' was one of them.
I dare bet that if i were to share ALL the information that i learned in this 3 days, not even the geniuses from endurance would be able to fully comprehend. As a matter of fact, personally, i couldn't fully understand either!
Day 1:
Safety seminar which is relatively useless due to the lack of accidents which is ironically a good thing. Speech by the vice-president of the IMCB which speaks Caucasian english that seems harder to understand than Mr white's. So I am grateful.
Basically, what the vice-president shares with us is the program that we'll be going through during our three day. And guess what? I only realise that TODAY. 3 days after he made that speech. Because there's a presentation on today (which is the last day) and i saw the slides similar to the ones in his speech. Inference skills =P.
By the way, the vice-president is a super zaiededed scientist who discovered the 'Hedgehog signaling pathway'. I feel some lost souls. Never mind, i would explain that later.
After the seminar, or rather speech, depending on how chim you would like your english to be, we went to the labs we would be at for three days! Its, Clean and Green with 3 huge bedrooms! Okay, that's the mocca advertisement. Never mind. Its indeed clean, but it isn't green and obviously no 3 huge bedrooms.
White is everything when you see the lab. Got separated into groups and started practicing how to use MICRO-pipettes. The keyword here is MICRO. In school, we would be using pipette that has a volume of 25ml. In micro-pipette, the unit is 'UL'.
Simply speaking, 1ml = 1000ul
And 1000ul is the largest pipette they have there. So imagine us drawing out 19ul of substances. Now that's crazy. But it simply has to be done.
Separated into 3 groups, we proceeded into 3 different experiments, for my group, we were focusing on PCR, 'Smoothened', Hedgehog signaling pathway and Zebrafishes!
Firstly, after lunch, we were to put on our lab coats and gloves, then proceed to the microscopes to separate out the mutant and the wild type (normal) embryos of the zebrafish. If i could upload a powerpoint i think i would teach a million people what i was doing. Seriously, if the schools wants me to present what we learned in IMCB, i wouldn't mind!
After separating out the mutant and wild types (normal), we proceeded to add ENZYMES, now this rings a bell doesn't it? Okay, so we added enzymes so that the embryos would be digested and all that's left is their 'Genomic DNA'. Sounds chim, but its just DNA. I think. Lol.
Then we had to leave the enzymes to digest our embryos while we went up to the Fish facility! To see zebrafishes.
Zebrafishes:
These type of fishes are commonly used in scientific research because they're easy to work on and cheap to rear. Easy to work on being small, and transparent embryos. Easy for observations. Cheap being small (again =P), and each time eggs are laid, there would be lots of them. Plus, they are genetically quite similar to humans, which is why we could use them for lots of experiments concerning DNA.
Placed genetically modified Zebrafishes in tanks for them to mate the next day. We put dividers so they won't get to mate. Haha. So we went home until day 2...
Day 2:
Went up to the fish facilities to see our fishes! Then remove the dividers and watch them mate. Depending on how vulgar you can get, there's a few version.
We went to observe the zebrafishes mate.(1)
We went to see zebrafish porn! (2)
-Censored- (3)
Here's a damn chim part. Must read carefully!
DNA got 2 pair of genes. If you don't know that go back to primary school.
We target the 'Smoothened'(smo) in the 'Hedgehog signaling pathway'(Hh) by adding 'cyclopamine'.
'Cyclonepamine' is a chemical that targets the 'smo' and hence disrupted the 'Hh'
'Hh' is a way that cells communicate with each other.
So when 'Cyclopamine' is added to target the 'smo' which in turns disrupted the 'Hh', the muscles in the fishes cannot develop properly.
'Green Fluorescent Protein'(GFP) is a protein that can attach to muscles cells and illuminate under the microscope. So when the normal fishes have this GFP, the observation would be a green illumination in the tail part.
How we identify the normal fishes from the mutant type is basically by looking for the green illumination. Since the mutant fishes does not develop muscles properly, it does not have GFP and hence does not glow/illuminate.
This is one experiment:
We mate 2 half-mutated(heterozygous) fishes
Mutant gene = -
Normal gene = +
Father fish (heterozygous) = 1 mutant gene, 1 normal gene (-/+)
Mother fish(heterozygous)= 1 normal gene, 1 mutant gene (+/-)
When they mate:
(-/+)(+/-) = (+/+) (+/-) (-/+) (-/-)
So by maths, there should be a 25% (-/-). Which are totally mutant. This will produce what i explained above. That is smoothened targeted, hedgehog signaling affected, muscles not developed, no GFP expression. Simple as that. But i can be quite sure that people are already lost. Hence i shall not go on.
From this blogpost, you can already estimate how chim this whole thing is. So ya, that's my aim =P.
I'm tired.
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