Field of Science

Mystery Micrograph #05

Ok, sane people seem to be too intimidated, or perhaps actually in posession of lives and stuff, and thus deprived of any yearning to go on a nightlong Google/journal hunt adventure. As a matter of fact, I suppose not everyone voluntarily leeches off the high speed VPN-free journal access at a lab computer at interesting hours of the night. Some might even go all the way home and resort to slow pdf-loading ordeals. Or maybe even skip the whole academic article thing altogether. Especially on a Friday night. So I'll just go back to doing super hard ones, and perhaps occasionally space them out with something publicly-accessible. But don't count on it. =P Actually, this way I get an excuse to learn about some REALLY obscure stuff. Some stuff so obscure it finds some protistology faculty clueless. Mwahaha. Stuff I should totally dump on my CV/Resume - to bewilder potential future employers with the sheer uselessness of my knowledge! ^_^

This one is open to everyone; AND I've made a whole chunk of various images available:

(to be referenced later; 12 - DAPI-stained DNA)

Due Sunday noon-ish, I guess. Feel free to ask questions - I may or may not answer them ^_~

Winner gets to feel good about themselves. I don't think this one is particularly beer-worthy.

Btw, summary of past Mystery Micrograph winners:
#01 - Rosie Redfield (protist with episymbiotic bacteria/Streblomastix)
#02 - nobody... (Haptoglossa)
#03 - Alastair Simpson (unaware of this blog's existence), Jan (after ridiculously revealing clues) (Bicosoecid)
#04 - Opisthokont (Euglyphid)
#05 - You? ^_^

Phylodeities and clade spirits now happily accepting beer sacrifices.

11 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. I just threw a wild guess (a kinetoplastid, like Leishmania maybe) but after googling it it didn't seem right to me.

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  3. You are in the right phylogenetic neighbourhood though! Think nearby groups...

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  4. Another hint - does the motion in figures 1-8 remind you of anything special?

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  5. Also, are the two cells in Figure 9 both of the same species? If so, under what circumstances do these cells lose their flagella?

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  6. Sorry, forgot the scalebars this time!

    Fig 1-9 10um
    Fig 10-14 2um

    Also, are the two cells in Figure 9 both of the same species?
    Yes, I wouldn't mix species, consciously anyway.

    If so, under what circumstances do these cells lose their flagella?
    An EM guy is asking me this? ;)

    People like you inflicting pain and suffering and damage upon the organism while fixing it for microscopy =P

    (other thread) Chris Taylor: For no good reason, I'm going to say it's Naegleria.

    Good guess, but no. It does look rather warped and amoeboid, but it's -another- discicristate. I think we have one group left at this point... ^_~

    Also, I AM working on those posts. Just kind of limited on time available to do random research at the moment, due to this "school" thing I'm currently enslaved by. I realised last week that I actually take courses, and those courses actually have midterms, which come way too soon in the term. Ooops. Otherwise, I'd probably have a freaking protist NOVEL out here by now... >_>

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  7. Geek. You looked up the paper, didn't you? ^_~

    So this time let's say the winners are:

    1/2 Johan - for getting close enough ish (sister clade), and also being fresh blood; seriously, we're getting freaking incestuous here!
    (I'm acquainted with the previous winners in person...and they're all somewhat affiliated in different ways with one department!)

    1/2 Opisthokont - after grotesquely revealing hints, and after pretty much every single other discicristate group was eliminated...

    Next time I should make it something easier. Or somehow get the protistology supergurus involved!

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  8. Not exactly: I did a search for "Rhynchopus" and that paper came up. It looked more like that than Diplonema, and the whole group only has the two genera! But yes, the hints were grotesquely revealing, as you say.

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