C. Elegans

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is a molecular genetics lab and one of our experiments right now is involving mutations in C. Elegans. Basically, we took C. Elegans (in the L4/young adults) that had been mutagenized with EMS and transfer them to a seperate growth culture and then after they reproduce, we could either transfer our original specimens into a new dish or kill them. Before I go further, I should mention that transferring these guys is hard work and it took me nearly 30-40 minutes to get some sort of understanding of the "technique" involved. (I really can't say that I still understand it, really I just took very small slabs of the agar and threw it in the new dish, all the while hoping for the best.) In the end, I ended up killing the original ones (put a platinum wire attached to a micropippet-type thing under a flame for a bit and then just touch the poor fellows with the wire).

Anyways, the point of this entry isn't to examine how much a cruel person I am (and in my defense, some people were even more cruel; they would scoop up the C. Elegan and put it into the fire!), but rather this post to reflect on time. No, not time-travelling or slowing it down, but rather just the subject of time in a larger view. Actually, I suspect I'm not even really going to being writing about time, but more so about different viewpoints. Our wonderful friends, C. Elegans, are considered a model organism for a plethora of reasons but the one that's been on my mind is how quickly they grow up -- roughly 8 hours. Imagine if our lives were any shorter, or rather if the period from 10-30 (or 40 even) passed in a time equivalent to 10-20. Our priorities would be radically different in a lot of respects (and astoundingly similar in a other ways). (A random point to add here is that I'm always a fan of having miniseries over movies when adapting multipart stories since you can flesh out much more; however, I do realize money moves the world and thus this won't happen for the foreseeable future).

Overall, the entire experience caused me to reflect a little bit on whats important and also how if the magnification on us was reduced, we'd become less and less visible against the our surroundings.

Random crap, I realize...but hey that's what this place is for.
I also haven't written anything worth reading in years; so, I apologize for the crappy style and grammatical errors.

Anyways speaking of classes, I'll try to post my schedule sometime soon. Why? I used it to do it a forum blog I had but that forum contracted the T-virus and was eventually put down. (I don't even know anything about Resident Evil and I just tried to use that. I'm a sad, sad man.)