Aren’t these the most amazing cupcakes ever? Seton Hurson Rossini from Pixel Whisk has posted a complete tutorial on how to make this incredibly realistic succulent plant cupcakes. I am in complete awe of her baking skills. Looks like the perfect project for a rainy Sunday!
Hello there! Against all rumours, this blog is not dead (yet). I was away on holiday for a couple of weeks, one of which I spent in Iceland. On the flight back I watched the Futurama episode “Reincarnation“. Where would you least expect to see something about microscopy and science? If you guessed “on a small screen in the back of an airplane seat somewhere between Iceland and the UK in a futuristic cartoon series animated in 8-bit pixel style”, you win a prize. This episode is split in three parts, all of which have been drawn in different...
What did I do at work today? Shuttled DNA into bacteria. Dipped arabidopsis plants into bacteria. Meeting. Another meeting. Another meeting. Oh, and I made a balloon kebab! Why did I make one? Because I can! Just kidding. Because we will be at the Oxfordshire Science Festival Launch Event on 3rd March, Bonn Square. How does it work? Check out the video and explanation here: http://www.physics.org/interact/physics-to-go/balloon-kebabs/index.html If, like me, you have a slight phobia of popping balloons, this might as well be the most exciting thing you do all day. My hands were sweaty afterwards, and so were my...
How many of these sound familiar? 1) When you open a new review about a conserved eukaryotic protein family, you first perform a whole document search for “plant” and “arabidopsis”. 2) People assume that you know the name of every plant and ask for your advice on growing vegetables. 3) You have looked at Monstera leaves and wondered if you could use these for your expression experiments. 4) You had a brown thumb before you were forced to care for your own plants for your experiments. 5) When you are in a restaurant, you automatically check if the table...
I have discovered http://memegenerator.net/. Expect more in the future. If you come up with a good plant science one, let me know and I will feature it here!
In this video by Andrew Harrison, Charlie Chaplin and an unnamed plant biologist show us how they turn frozen peas into samples for microscopy. This is the more detailed video description from Chlorofilms, where the video won an honourable mention in the fourth competition. “In this video we used a Charlie Chaplin “spoof” This video will demonstrate that differential centrifuge, microscopy and staining are three important tools for study of plant cells. 1. under low speed of differential centrifuge, we can separate whole cells from the cell homogenate; 2. microscopy can reveal details of the cellular structures. 3. different...
It’s the 24th December and the advent calendar has come to an end. I hope that you enjoyed it. I will be back in January to blog about plants, cells and science. Wishing you a very merry Christmas and an amazing year 2012! Anne Wallpaper 1600×1200. Wallpaper 2560×1600.
DNA 2.0 has just reported on a recent science paper about a new range of fluorescent proteins. The PDF can be downloaded here. Without any doubt this has to be the most groundbreaking publication of 2011 and I urge everyone to read it and discuss it in their lab’s last journal club of this year! Nine improved monomeric fluorescent proteins from Rangifer tarandus. Santa Claes, Felix Navidad, Nisse Ness E. , Jeremy Elf Tootoo, Dasher Sridhar, Tinsel Tian and Laura Menorah Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci, NorthPole (2011) 12:25-31 Abstract Fluorescent proteins are genetically encoded, easily imaged reporters that have...
This song has nothing to do with plants or cells, but it features the science of blood clotting, a ukulele and a toy piano. What more could you ask for!
Rumour has it that there was a hint of snow in Oxford yesterday. I didn’t see it because I was trapping in a laser lab without windows at the Central Laser Facility (no, that’s not a grammatical error, it’s a geeky word play – I was trapping Golgi bodies with optical tweezers). Anyway, since winter has now very officially arrived, I have made a little something for all you plant organelle fans out there: a wintery wallpaper which you can download and which will hopefully make you smile every time you turn on your computer. It’s the vacuole, a...
…and then fill it up with essential gingerbread lab equipment – such as these Petri dishes with icing sugar bacterial colonies growing on them or DNA agarose gels. And of course you’d need a researcher to conduct these all important sugar overload experiments. Pure genius, Ms Humble, that is all I can say. If you love baking, have a look at the other blog posts, the pictures are mouth-watering! Find all recipes here: http://notsohumblepie.blogspot.com/2009/12/science-cookies-gel-electrophoresis.html http://notsohumblepie.blogspot.com/2009/11/biology-cookies-petri-dish.html http://notsohumblepie.blogspot.com/2009/11/gingerbread-scientists-amuse-me.html
Dear players of guitars, ukuleles, banjos, tin drums and any other musicians: We would love to see your own rendition of “The Vacuole Song” on YouTube! You can download the lyrics with the guitar chords here: The Vacuole Song – lyrics and chords. If you do, please leave a comment here or drop me an email!
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