You’re so hot, you denature my proteins.

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Its lovely to have this blog as an excuse to be geeky. To freely roam the web for biology chat up lines and to scratch my head trying to come up with my own. But I do think there is a problem – I have one hour to unwind and this is what I do in my relax time??

  • You’re so sweet I am developing insulin resistance.
  • Let’s convert our potential energy to kinetic energy.
  • I wish I were adenine because then I could get paired with U.
  • Hey baby, why don’t you get your ligase working on my okazaki fragment and lengthen my strand.
  • I want to stick to u like glue-cose.

  • Right now we’re just two RNA, but maybe we could transcribe together and become DNA.
  • If I were a neurotransmitter, I would be dopamine so I could activate your reward pathway.
  • I’m POSITIVE I’d like your electron, want to bond?
  • I’ve had my ion you for some time.
  • Our love is like dividing by zero…. you cannot define it
  • You’re like the neurotransmitter to my receptor; When you bind, you activate me, releasing my excitatory action potential..
  • I wish I was your coronary artery, so that I could be wrapped around your heart.
  • If I were an enzyme, I’d be DNA helicase so I could unzip your genes.

 

DNA helicase is an enzyme that aids in DNA synthesis by ‘unzipping’ the two strands of a DNA helix so that DNA polymerase can access the DNA to add nucleotides and effect copying

 

 

 

My own little addition…

  • Our chromosomes would combine beautifully.
  • You are the substrate to my active site.
  • You are the C to my G and I’m the T to your A.
  • I will share my electrons with you so we can make a covalent bond.
  • We are both made of nucleic acids. Let’s bind and form a double helix.

 

Wellcome Image Awards 2012

Every year since 2000, the Wellcome Trust has celebrated “the creators of the most informative, striking and technically excellent images” that the Wellcome Images picture library has acquired along the way.

The winners of the 12th Wellcome Image Awards were announced five days ago. This year, winners have used techniques ranging from medical photography to electron microscopy and have encompassed a wide range of areas across medicine and the life sciences. Continue to photos

Dedi-CAKE-tion to science..

So I turned 23 on the 23rd.. at first I was told by a friend that this is your champagne birthday. A second friend told me it’s called your golden birthday. I had to go check the most reliable source out there and Wiki says that both work. In fact, you can also refer to it as your grand, lucky or star birthday.

I won’t beat about the bush though – my real enthusiasm for this number (aside from it being a prime number) goes way back. In fact it goes all the way back to the moment of my conception when 23 chromatids traveling in one spermatid fused with one ovum, also containing 23 chromatids. The genetic material fused giving rise to 23 pairs of chromosomes that sit in my cells and dictate my bodily functions!

23 is clearly an important number for us all. I got slightly carried away by the prospect of turning 23 that I decided to order a cake in the shape of a double helix. If this isn’t true dedication to biology, then I am at a loss as to what more I can do..

The cake didn’t turn out quite as planned, probably because information gets lost in translation and all my communication with the baker was via email. I tried my best though, and sent her several diagrams of what the DNA double helix looks like and how the base pairs (A,C,G,T) sit snugly in between the two helices. Watson and Crick would have been proud of me. I had hoped for a cake in the shape of a double helix, which I must admit probably would have looked more like two worms crawling about a plate. The cake turned out as a bright blue square with a sugar helix afloat the blue waters. Continue reading

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Tumour

A tumour-killing virus can hide from the immune system and avoid being destroyed by “hitchhiking” on the back of blood cells.

Reoviridae, or the reovirus, refers to a family of viruses whose name is derived from ‘respiratory enteric orphan viruses’ – ‘orphaned’ initially as they were not associated with any known disease. 4 of the 9 genera can infect humans and animals, although currently known effects are generally limited to stomach upsets and colds in children.

Exploiting the Reovirus’ Oncolytic Properties

The reovirus has more recently been shown to have oncolytic, i.e. cancer-killing, properties. Continue reading

Neuroculture: cultivating our gardens and shaping the arts

“Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculptor of his own brain” – Cajal, 1923

Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852 –1934) was a Spanish neuroscientist, pathologist and histologist. Voltaire (1694–1778) was a French Enlightment writer, historian and philosopher. Pablo Garcia-Lopez (1977-current) is a neuroscientist and an artist. His work as an artist exemplifies the rising influence of neuroscience in popular culture.

So what is the link between these three men?

Continue reading