As I mentioned in an earlier blog I
am doing research with C. Elegans. C. Elegans are small nematodes. My day-to-day activities
include feeding them and crossing them with other strains. They are
hermaphrodites, which in layman’s terms mean they can make babies with
themselves. There are a few males in the population in order to keep the
diversity constant but other than that they are all hermaphrodites. The
particular strain I am working with does not have many males but in order to
cross them with other strains males are necessary. So a large portion of my
early research was finding one of these males. I did and had successfully made
a male stock. These stocks need to be transferred to new petri dishes regularly
to assure they have enough food and to combat over population.
However, over spring break I
decided that I only needed to check on them once. This turned out to be almost
catastrophic because when I came back the male stock had died. This would have
set me back weeks if had I not gotten lucky and found a single living male. I
was able to resurrect the male stock from this one male and now I have plentiful
stock again.
I learned from this experience that
when it comes to important things you should always error on the side of safety
and not leave things up to chance because if you do, it could set you back a
long ways. I assumed that they would be fine, but I wasn’t counting on the fact
that these males I am working with are less fertile than normal C. Elegans. This
means they need more attention and quicker transfers in order to proliferate.
Other than that incident my
research has been going very well. I really enjoy watching the worms because it
reminds me of how many different living things there are and how in the grand
scheme of thing I am just one small part of a much larger world.
I don't have much of a response to this other than during my first semester (maybe it was second...) of introductory biology, I was convinced it was sea elegans. I literally got into an argument with someone who tried to tell me that no...it's the letter C. elegans. In my defense, it was never written on any of the lecture slides so all I heard was "sea elegans". What a freshman.
ReplyDeleteI always find it amusing when I reflect on all the pieces of knowledge about the organisms and the world around us that I have acquired from being a bio major. There are millions and millions and millions of organisms that are overlooked by the majority of the world. I feel like I have, overall, a heightened awareness of all of the things that play a role in keeping the world functioning. I mean, how many people know about the importance of keeping a male stock of C. elegans? Or even think about the reasons why one would want to grow C. elegans? Or even know what a C. elegan is? I'm in microbiology this semester and I am still amazed at the number of microbes that exist.Whenever I learn about all of these microscopic organisms, I am, as you said, just reminded how I (or humans in general) are only one very small part of the world.
ReplyDelete