Latest Posts by mikrobiotch - Page 2

motivating myself to write my paper about fungi by talking about fungi:

in Tokyo in 2010, scientists wanted to test the limits of 'brainless' organisms, especially their decision making skills, so they made a little obstacle course in a Petri dish and sent a slime mold to navigate it. they set it up with light and oats, the oats acting as goals and the lights acting as deterrents. the oats were placed in such a way that represented the major train stations in Tokyo. in LESS THAN TWO DAYS, the slime mold had perfectly navigated the obstacle course and hit all the oat stations. when the scientists compared the Petri dish patterns to the city, they noticed that the slime mold had perfectly replicated the train lines of Tokyo. in the most efficient way possible. a task which took humans FIVE YEARS to plan, design and build. slime molds do not have nervous systems, brains, or (as it was previously believed) the ability to form complex thoughts. however, these molds were able to design this system quicker and more efficiently than humans ver have. they were even able to create a path for the shortest route through an IKEA.

the whole concept that organisms other than humans are unable to make decisions or solve complex problems is incredibly outdated and should have been disproven years ago when the Great Chain of Being was first challenged, but these ideas have stuck around for hundreds of years and are only now beginning to be opposed. for years, people thought that organisms like octopi could be tested on in labs because they were unable to feel pain or form thoughts, but only now is it being discovered that octopi have huge brains and are capable of numerous skills, they can recognize people and miss them, and they have the same or even better understanding of the world around them than humans. every other organisms' intelligence has been measured against humans for so long, that the idea that other creatures may have a different way of processing information is something completely unheard of.

in conclusion: brainless fungi and molds are redefining what humans believe to be 'intelligence' by exhibiting amazing navigation of obstacle courses, problem-solving and decision-making skills.

As you're a proper phd scientist who made it through the gauntlet of higher education, I then assume that you have done some classes that have landed you in a fly lab or two. Do you happen to have a favorite Drosophila melanogaster mutation? Mine is apterous because they're flies who cant do the one thing they're named for (they can't fly).

I managed to avoid the fly labs, but I had amazing lectures by the inimitable Dr Vernon French during my bachelors at the University of Edinburgh about evo-devo and Drosophila. No better way to develop a deep fascination with HOX genes and other transcription factors. Off the top of my head, I think Bithorax is pretty nifty.

[src]

[🔬 Microscope equipped.]

🧫 e-colin Follow Another day, another dollar trying to infect this host! Rise and grind pathogens 💸

4 μnotes

🦠 cell287776540923 Follow might fuck around and reactivate my oncogenes later

💊 mr-t-cell1989 grins at you violently

2,334 μnotes

🦠 natkiller28937 Follow Who up patrolling the body for cells without MHC Class I molecules 😎😎

🧬 nora-virus Follow You know what? This isn't okay. Pathogens work hard to infect host cells and reproduce. It's the only way for them to perpetuate their own existence. Letting pathogens infect host cells is absolutely necessary to prevent their total extermination. Killing is wrong! Immune cells need to learn to be tolerant of other microbes instead of destroying us just because we want to seize and consume this body's resources.

💊 mr-t-cell1989

KUNG

🦠 natkiller71642 Follow

POW

🩸 neutro-phil2

PENIS

30 trillion μnotes

[Hotwheels gen. nov., a new ground spider genus (Araneae, Gnaphosidae) from southwest China]

The generic name refers to Hot Wheels, a collectible die-cast toy car made by Mattel, as the long, coiled embolus of this new genus resembles a Hot Wheels track; neuter in gender.

Liu & Zhang, 2024

DNA from a strawberry!!! This was super cool (the little white strands in the clear is actual dna from a strawberry!) strawberries are octoploids which means they have 8 copies of each chromosome! It makes it easier to see and extract it’s DNA. That’s wild!

Microbiology!

[ID: a banner made of emojis of microscopes, bubbling flasks, and DNA, with different bacteria emojis from a combo emoji scattered between them. /End ID]

"Microbial Rainbow" (detail), Tal Danino, 2018

source

The SDGs and the UN itself have fallen in Gaza. This is a shame!!!!! & It appears that #SDGs can't be applicable equally in the different parts of the world !!!

What advice would you give to someone who is going into microbiology ? Love your blog 😺

thank you! 🫶🏻

for someone going into microbiology, i’d definitely recommend putting effort into your chemistry courses, especially if they’re not your strong suit (i’m not very good at chemistry)

also, take any lab experiences that you can get, even if they’re not micro! any time that you can get into the lab and get your hands dirty (metaphorically speaking) will help you develop your skills!

Call me mRNA because AUG AGA GGG UUU UUC AUG GUG GGA UGA

Hiiii!!

Could you guys please vote for my agar art in this contest? 🌿🌸

It would mean the world to me 🥹

These pictures show PAS (purple/pink) and GMS (brown/blue) staining of a lymph node biopsy from a canine patient with lymphadenopathy and weight loss. Histology was suggestive of likely a fungal organism (bright pink in the PAS stain and dark brown/black in the GMS stain), however a mixed infection with an algal species could not be definitively ruled out without microbiology.

Our microbiologist cultured an Aspergillus species from this dog, and is in the process of ruling out any other possibilities.

What's especially cool is in one of the PAS pictures, you can see an organism trapped within an actively dividing macrophage!

Was watching an online Mycology lecture, blacked out and came to with this on my screen

*Cryptomycota is a phylum of the Fungi family, but honestly not explaining that kinda makes this post funnier

Monday december 13

hello my lovelies! sorry for being so absent, the ib has been crushing me haha (laughing to avoid crying) so I have not been able to be active on social media. you know, the future doctor agenda is not quite fun if you ignored biology for three years so I hope you understand <3

school ends in 2 days (thank the gods) so I need to doooo a lot of things.

🎧 - indiana (hombres g)

📚 - chemistry textbook

THINGS I NEED TO DO FOR TOMORROW

finish my presentation of gender roles for spanish

study for my chem final

send emails to my glopol teacher

prepare my microbiology lab

Did we kill them?

Looking at what concentrations my antibiotics killed resistant Staphylococcus bacteria.

Higher antibiotic concentrations are on the right side, where there is clear liquid with no bacteria growth. It works!

Question from one of my Mycograsshoppers on Patreon: “what types of potential pests might be attracted to the [mushroom] spores?”

My answer: “Good question mycograsshopper! Primarily fungal gnats :) thats my biggest concern. Technically mites, but thats less common, and also technically, I believe, a few choice flies and some beetles could be attracted if you kept your research area wide open to the outside long enough!!! Any creature that youd consider a pest for your mushrooms is termed “fungivore” and includes mycelium, spore, and fruit body-hunting pests💯”

hi i hate being perceived on the internet 99% of the time but you should take this quiz i made about the immune system

Pterocarpus Angolensis is a tree native to South Africa. It’s also commonly known as the bloodwood tree due to the fact that when it’s chopped or damaged, a deep red sap which looks eerily similar to blood, seeps from the tree. In fact, the purpose of the sap is to coagulate and seal the wound to promote healing, much like blood.

millipedes eating Tubifera ferruginosa

by Bea Leiderman

i got to work with some HeLa cells today!

as cool of an experience as this was and as interesting as these things are, it’s always important to acknowledge the bad along with the good. Henrietta Lacks’ cells revolutionized so many areas of research, but she deserved so much better.

working with these cells today just really reminded me of the duality of many scientific developments. many things have come with great cost and harm and i think that’s something important to keep in mind.

if you aren’t familiar with the story of Henrietta Lacks, i highly recommend looking her up. there’s a book about her live (the immortal life of henrietta lacks) that’s very illuminating.

Blorbo family tree <3

HORROR WEEK- FOTD #144 : apple bolete! (exsudoporus frostii)

the apple bolete (also frost's bolete) is a mycorrhizal fungus in the family boletaceae >:-) it typically grows near the hardwood trees of the eastern US, southern mexico & costa rica. it was chosen for horror week due to its appearance being reminiscent of muscle tissue !!

the big question : will it kill me?? nope !! however, although they are edible, they are not recommended for consumption as it is quite easy to confuse them with other red boletes. ^^

e. frostii description :

"the shape of the cap of the young fruit body ranges from a half sphere to convex, later becoming broadly convex to flat or shallowly depressed, with a diameter of 5–15 cm (2.0–5.9 in). the edge of the cap is curved inward, although as it ages it can uncurl and turn upward. in moist conditions, the cap surface is sticky as a result of its cuticle, which is made of gelatinized hyphae. if the fruit body has dried out after a rain, the cap is especially shiny, sometimes appearing finely areolate (having a pattern of block-like areas similar to cracked, dried mud). young mushrooms have a whitish bloom on the cap surface.

the colour is bright red initially, but fades with age. the flesh is up to 2.5 cm (1.0 in) thick, & ranges in colour from pallid to pale yellow to lemon yellow. the flesh has a variable staining reaction in response to bruising, so some specimens may turn deep blue almost immediately, while others turn blue weakly & slowly.

the tubes comprising the pore surface (the hymenium) are 9–15 mm deep, yellow to olivaceous yellow (mustard yellow), turning dingy blue when bruised. the pores are small (2 to 3 per mm), circular, & until old age a deep red colour that eventually becomes paler. the pore surface is often beaded with yellowish droplets when young (a distinguishing characteristic), & readily stains blue when bruised. the stipe is 4 to 12 cm (1.6 to 4.7 in) long, & 1 to 2.5 cm (0.4 to 1.0 in) thick at its apex. it is roughly equal in thickness throughout its length, though it may taper somewhat toward the top ; some specimens may appear ventricose (swollen in the middle). the stipe surface is mostly red, or yellowish near the base ; it is reticulate — characterized by ridges arranged in the form of a net-like pattern."

[images : source & source] [fungus description : source]

just some very Shaped things

I sometimes think about bacteria growing on (in?) an agar plate and how strange it must be from their perspective. To be taken from your (many times hostile) natural habitat and placed in (on?) an alien landscape made entirely of food that caters perfectly to your dietary needs. You live there, and your descendants thrive there for generations after, and then comes a Cataclysm. And they die in an inferno of steam and pressure, suddenly and unexpectedly.

And you never knew you were the fortunate ones. Your brethren lived their lives in other equally alien worlds, except theirs were tailored to kill them, torture them, or starve them of necessary nutrients. Their torment and your bliss serve a purpose ufathomable to you, a purpose of creatures so vast and unknowable, they might as well be Gods.

I think about bacteria sometimes.

When I was in the hospital, they gave me a big bracelet that said ALLERGY, but like. I'm allergic to bees. Were they going to prescribe me bees in there.

could you explain why/if we can't just copy the genes of one animal and splice them into another animal, for example why we couldn't give humans cat ears?

There's no one easy way to answer this, but the basic answer is that it's not that simple. There's no one gene, or even easily reducible set of genes, that just is "make cat ears". Not only is there a network of genes activated within a cell, there are a myriad of signals from nearby cells (the "microenvironment") as well as cues from the rest of the body and environment.

So each one of the cells making your ear isn't just encoded to be a cell that makes your ear. In fact, most of them don't have any "ear" genetic characteristics or activation. They're generic cartilage or skin cells that were told to grow more or less by neighboring cells or distant cells during carefully coordinated times during growth and development. Each cell interprets this signal in different ways, and also receives multiple signals at a time, the combination of which can produce unique results.

The easiest to interpret example of this is finger development. During development, when your hand is still a fingerless paddle, a single cell on the pinky side of your hand (or thumb side, it could be reversed) releases a signalling molecules to nearby cells. A cell receiving the highest dose will start to become a pinky, and send a signal for the cells immediately around it to aide in that. The next cell that isn't aiding that, but still receives the initial signal, receives a lower concentration of that signal since it's further away. That lower concentration signals a ring finger, and it repeats until you get thumbs at the lowest concentrations.

That's the most visible example, but it's similar to what happens all over the body- signals that are dependent on the structure and genetics of the microenvironment, not just the genetics of the developing cells alone.

This careful network of timing, signals, gene activations, and spatial placement of cells is the core of the field of Developmental Biology (which, technically, my PhD is in as well bc it's often wrapped in with molecular bio lol).

So making cat ears on a human genetically would essentially require not only genetic manipulation, but also babysitting the fetus the entire time and adding in localized signals to the microenvironment of the developing ear cells, which is essentially impossible. There's too much "human" flying around to realistically get that result, and an attempt at doing so would essentially be akin to molecular sculpting. That's why *my* preferred approach would be epithelial stem cell manipulation/printing and subsequent grafting, but that's an entirely different thing.

If you're interested in this kind of thing, the most approachable and engaging summary of developmental biology is the book "Your Inner Fish", by Neil Shubin, the discoverer of Tiktaalik. He summarizes a lot of dev biology through the lens of evolutionary biology, which is a great way to see how differences in structures have arisen and differentiate across the tree of life.

If you want a shorter introduction, and like cute but kinda "cringey in the way you love" science parodies: the song evo-devo by a capella science is really fun and gets stuck in my head a lot:

But yeah, hope that answered your question!

A new species of African legless skink, genus Acontias Cuvier, 1816 “1817” (Squamata: Scincidae) from Serra da Neve inselberg, south-western Angola

Mariana P. Marquesa, Diogo Parrinha, Arthur Tiutenko, et al.

ABSTRACT

During a recent survey of the Serra da Neve inselberg in south-western Angola, a population of legless skinks of the genus Acontias was found. Only three species of this genus have been recorded for the country so far – A. occidentalis, A. kgalagadi and A. jappi. Using an integrative approach and combining molecular and morphological data we found that the Serra da Neve population represents a new species, closely related to species such as A. percivali and some members of the A. occidentalis species complex. In this paper, we describe this population as a new species, Acontias mukwando sp. nov. and provide brief comments on its conservation and biogeography.

Read the paper here:

Full article: A new species of African legless skink, genus Acontias Cuvier, 1816 “1817” (Squamata: Scincidae) from Serra da Neve inselberg, south-western Angola (tandfonline.com)

i complain alot when it comes to uni and my course, but not gonna lie, here on my final year i've started to fall in love with it again, the way the fascination started when i was younger and learning new things was exciting.

throughout learning it always felt like i was not built for it, that I just cannot for the life of me focus and dedicate myself on anything. and i was just doubting myself and i should change courses or drop out because I was not meant to do this. and now on my second last semester, things kinda clicked. It may be hard for me to understand and learn, but it's worth it. To see the universe in all of its beauty, its ugliness, its complexity, its charm; it's a struggle but I'll endure it for you.

and I find myself really hoping I get to continue down in the stream of sciences and contribute to something for nature and for humanity as well, or at least deepen my understanding of how this universe works and widen my view of how intricate and special this world we live in actually is, how caring it is, how every single thing is worth something, and nothing from nature is ever truly useless