Inching my way to the dark side...

I just dropped Gene Regulation in Development. In favour of Phylogenetic Biology.

And I call myself a [future(?)] developmental cell biologist. Heh.

You see, it's not that I ever intend to hang out for hours on end aligning sequences and building trees. I'm a proud microscopist, and will not stoop to dealing with mere gene fragments of organisms =P But...but...I'm getting tainted. My previously pure spirit is being contaminated by this...this interest...in evolution and phylogenetic thinking! For that I blame some of my friends. And also some of my instructors. And also the medically-oriented teaching on the 'other' side (eg developmental biology).

In the end, I figured that a 'good' (for my taste) phylogenetics course might actually be a better, and more useful, experience than a mediocre (again, for my taste) course in development or cell biology or genetics, even though those fields are more relevant. And considering that it becomes harder and harder to just stick to a single organism when learning about various cellular processes, I might as well just study those subjects on my own, as I prefer. It's very difficult when a course approaches a subject in a very different way from what you're looking for; eg. stressing the biomedical applications while ignoring greater diversity. I understand that pretty much every single other student in the class could care less about diversity and is perhaps utterly fascinated by biomed (and being employable), but I'm not one of them. Thus, I should probably avoid studying with them. Besides, actually knowing how to interpret phylogenies properly would never harm. Especially since few people outside evolutionary biology actually bother to learn about it...

Besides, skipping out on the opportunity to learn phylogenetics from one of its gods would be kind of stupid.

Also, I have cruel friends:

Brainwashing by evolutionary biologists, exhibit A: Opisthokont's contribution. Un-nice person sent me phylo software to play with. For fun. Did you know I had a biochem final to study for at that time? Furthermore, did you know that the biochem final randomly featured a sequence alignment question meant to 'stump' the noobs unfamiliar students? Did you know I totally aced that question and chewed them out for rooting the tree at the longest branch? (the sequences were all hypothetical, and no outgroup was specified).
There MUST be some cosmic connection there!

Evolutionary cell biology. That's a field with like, what, 4 labs, if that? Unemployment, here I come!

Goddammit, why can't I just become fascinated with cancer or something? Grrr.

Apologies for the slow posting lately -- kind of swamped with stuff. Real Life^TM tends to happen at the most inopportune moments, like when you've got a few weeks of blogging to catch up on. And delinquent posting obligations...

Less-crappy blogging to follow soon...

This might actually be a good class...

Shamelessly stolen from the course notes:

Actually, he's wrong, it goes:
Dirt --> lipid glop --> angels --> deities --> eobacteria --> mesobacteria* --> megabacteria* --> negibacteria --> Higher Bacteria
(*I made those up. I hope...)

Of course, there's a bit of an annoying semi-tragic element to having intro invert biol taught by a protistologist. Can we cut the metazoa and go out and enjoy REAL diversity instead?

Still, I'm quite excited -- I actually 'don't mind'* invert metazoa. I tend to gravitate towards spineless things, apparently.

*Reads: 'have a side interest in'

Speaking of which, spineless Sunday(lol.) Protist is definitely on its way. Sort of.

Meanwhile, quick question:
[metazoan, vertebrate-focused] Gene Regulation in Development or Sociolinguistics?
Gene Reg Dev would be much harder, but potentially interesting/relevant; socioling would help my breadth requirements and be easier, though very prof-dependent, and I haven't gone to check out the prof yet...


Other than that, who else here is enraged/stunned/irritated/perplexed by Tom's new 'Eozoa' obsession?

PS: "Protozoa" -- Drop. That. Term. Already. It's the 21st century, for fuck's sake. STOP. RESURRECTING. DEAD. TAXA. Grrrr....

It's probably time to take a break when...

I just failed to realise pAP3::GUS is a transcriptional fusion reporter and therefore only expresses if and only if there is transcriptional activity of its promotor (hence pAP3); thus 35S driven expression of the same protein would not necessarily result in GUS activity, unless shit exists to activate it, including itself, if it is thus inclined. Should I take a break from my slides and go home now?

(this is for a class. Will never look at goddamn flowers the same way every again. I hate you, ABC genes. Past 3am the morning a talk is due about them anyway...)

PISTEFUCKINGLATTA*! SEPALLATA! (those look really scary about now...)

Also, Nature papers become unbearably dense when you have to present about every single fucking sentence in them...

*grumble grumble*

*Does the FUCKING insertion have to be italicised too? What do gene naming conventions say about expletive inclusions?

PS: For those of you who have absolutely no fucking clue what I just rambled on about -- lucky bastards!!! [ok the HTML got fucked; I'm not rewriting that, no fucking way] is AP3 expression, but that's just shitty wording and is getting me really bloody confused at this hour. Grrrrrr. I was like "WTF won't it show GUS if the fucking same thing is constitutively expressed via 35S!?" and then hung my head in deep shame and embarassment. And profanity.

5am update: Screw this I'm off to bed... been working on this for the past 12h pretty much non-stop... can totally wing it tomorrow if I have to. Actually, I'd do a lot less preparation if it wasn't a group project. Other people seem to have phobias of 'winging it'. Too bad, because all you really need to do is sound convincing. I mean, it works for me in lab meetings... isn't that how science really works anyway? (oh shit, the secret's out now!)

And yes, I made all the slides myself despite it being a group project. Did I ever mention groupmates can actually somehow manage to slow you down rather than help sometimes? Even if they're willing to help, they can still be fucking useless? Well, now I have. Grrrr.