Some questions were very sensible.

“Where did you go to university?”
I went to both universities in Munich – in Munich because I am German. I changed uni after three years because the Technical University had better courses in the fields I was interested in. Some girls only believed that I was German after I said something in German :D

“What happens if we break the microscope?”
“You will have to pay for it and it costs £250.000.” Shocked faces all around. “I am joking. You can’t break the microscope.”
Short silence, then someone chirped in: “I am sure we could if we tried.” Right. “Ok- I am sure you could. Don’t break the microscope. Don’t spill something on it. Don’t kick it. Don’t sit on it. If you break the microscope, everyone will be REALLY angry with you.” That seemed to satisfy them.

Other questions were unexpected.

“Did the Big Bang make a sound or if not, is its name thus misleading?”

I had no clue. My immediate response – and that of everyone else I asked later – was: “If a tree falls in a forest and noone is there to hear it…”. This question actually led to a long debate between a bunch of scientists from different fields, who all came up with different replies. We am still not completely sure, but we all agreed that “Big Expansion” doesn’t sound as catchy. Great question!

According to this website, the Big Bang sounded more like a Big Scream. Here is  a suggestion by Prof Mark Whittle from the University of Virginia about how the  universe’s first million years might have sounded like – compressed into five seconds: http://www.astro.virginia.edu/dmw8f/sounds/cdromfiles/first1Myr.wav. Another suggestion was put together by Prof John Cramer, University of Washington.

“Have you seen any dead bodies?”

No. The only dead bodies I have seen so far were dead Golgi bodies. My job isn’t THAT exciting.

http://iws.collin.edu/jbeck/Cellsweb/Page0003.html

The easiest one was: “Where can we get a cool Brookes pen?” I had a bunch in my office. In grey and pink.

“YAY!”

Today is the first ever Fascination of Plants Day and I am very excited, as my Twitter friends will be able to testify (tweet ALL the plants!). All over the world there will be plant-related activities today, in Botanic Gardens, universities and research institutes. Our group will be at Oxford Botanic Garden from 10-7 pm and show people what plant parts and cells look like under the microscope!

To celebrate the occasion, Martin Austwick has written a very lovely song from the view of an ancient tree. Go and listen to it and don’t blame me if it gets stuck in your head!

The Methuselah tree, not far from Death Valley in southern California, is estimated to be 4,800 years old. It was born 2,800 years before Christ and maybe 400 years before Britons built Stonehenge. Pando, The Trembling Giant, a clonal colony of aspens near Fish Lake in southern Utah, is estimated to be 80,000 years old. As far as I can work out, it’s believed that human beings could not have made their way to North America before around 45,000 BC. In tree years, Pando was my age before he saw a human being. Europeans arrived six months ago.

http://www.thesoundoftheladies.com/2012/05/14/international-fascination-of-plants-day/

I have also put a medley of our musical cell videos on YouTube, just in case you need to erase Martin’s song from your mind with a bit of the vacuole song.

I’ll finish off with a bit of fun: What is your birthday flower? Check out this list and let us know in the comments. Mine is a leek. Not sure what to make of this!

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birthday_flowers

I have set up guest blog accounts for Vicki and the student team and I hope that they will write something about their experiences in our lab and the research they will be carrying out (of course without giving away any secret data). Our ultimate dream goal is to publish a paper with Vicki as co-author and everyone else named in the acknowledgements. So, watch this space and keep your fingers crossed that we will discover something exciting!  The students have already been talking about the Golgi apparatus, the endoplasmic reticulum and cancer cell biology in their STEM science club, which impressed me immensely. They will be covering cell biology only later at school and this is the first time that they have come across organelles. Yet they have already discussed how transport vesicles recognise the correct target membranes! I admit that I am slightly scared of their questions. :))

PS: What are we going to research?

Golgi bodies, duh! 

Reporter genes help us to study responses to external conditions and stresses. Some of these genes encode enzymes which convert a chemical substrate into a visual signal (for example blue colour or emitted light). The disadvantage of these reporter genes is that they require a person to carry out experiments on plant tissue. As crew time is precious and the first long-distance space flights are likely to be fully automated, we need reporter genes which do not require human assistance to be visualised and give off a signal that can be transmitted telemetrically (e.g. by satellites).

Paul and co-workers (2) argue that GFP is an ideal reporter gene for this purpose and describe a prototype plant GFP imager which they are testing in the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse. The greenhouse sits in the Haughton Crater on Devon Island, Canada, also described as “the closest thing to Mars on Earth“. This area is ideal for the simulation of space experiments as it has extreme terrain and climate conditions and allows human access only for a short time during the year.

In order to study the response of plants to this environment, researchers look at genes which are known to be switched on under stress conditions such as heat, cold or low pressure. These genes are under control of promoters – stretches of DNA preceding the coding region – which sense such conditions and regulate gene expression accordingly. When we exchange such a gene with our reporter gene GFP,  we can create a plant that lights up in response to certain external conditions – a bit like a Morse signal light, only without the fast blinking.

The model organism used in these experiments is good old Arabidopsis thaliana, grown on plates that fit perfectly into the GFP imager. The plate is illuminated by blue-light emitting LEDs. The light signal passes through a filter and is then captured digitally and transmitted via satellite modem to Simon Fraser University.

Image source: Paul et al. (2008), Sensors, 8, 2762-2773. http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/8/4/2762

What can such a remote space imaging system be used for? There are actually two functions for these glowing reporter plants. The first one is, as already mentioned above, to understand which genes are switched on in plants while they adapt to space conditions. This would make it possible to improve plant lines in order to help them cope better with these new stresses.  Once their reactions are better characterised however, these plants could also act as biomonitors to provide information about their environment to the crew (3). I am completely fascinated by the idea of growing plants in space and the research based around it and hope to hear more from tiny arabidopsis astronauts in the future!

Dr Paul and Dr Ferl with their plants. Image source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/TAGES.html

Literature:

(1) Leafy Green Astronauts: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast09apr_1/

(2) Deployment of a Prototype Plant GFP Imager at the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse of the Haughton Mars Project
Anna-Lisa Paul, Matthew Bamsey, Alain Berinstain, Stephen Braham, Philip Neron, Trevor Murdoch, Thomas Graham and Robert J. Ferl. (2008) Sensors , 8, 2762-2773

(3) “The role of plants in future space endeavors” by John Z. Kiss: http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/meetings/misc/nov00_wks/jkiss.pdf

This episode is split in three parts, all of which have been drawn in different styles. In the first part, Fry makes a diamond planet explode (long story). The Professor then uses a piece of that diamond  in the second part as sophisticated novel microscope lens to discover the universe’s smallest particle. Spoiler alert: it’s a black pixel.

“The Professor forms a scientific equation explaining the mysteries of the universe from this single unit, only to become depressed upon realizing that there are no further scientific questions to answer. Fry cheers him up by saying that he has yet to solve why the laws of the universe are what they are and not something else, thus giving scientists a reason to keep looking for answers about the universe.”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation_(Futurama)).

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find a longer clip of the scene, so you will have to get hold of the DVD and watch it yourself!

From the description of “My Green Pet” (Hwang et al. 2010):

“The difficulty that children have in perceiving plants as living entities has been verified by several studies. As an initial attempt to address this issue, we propose “My Green Pet”, an interactive plant for children. Through this, children enjoy human-like interactions with the plant and also perceive that this particular plant is living. This is achieved by personifying a regular plant by giving it human feelings and emotions, such as pain, joy, laughter, etc. The interactive plant is implemented over a current-based framework, which enables it to recognize multiple gestures and give audio and visual feedback to the user. The effectiveness of the interactive plant on the conception of plants on children was studied with a simple user test. We observed the children interacting with “My Green Pet” and noticed interactions resembling those between people. We also noticed the children being increasingly curious about the plant, resulting in spending more time with “My Green Pet”. A straight-forward questionnaire done by children revealed that the children’s perception of life in plants greatly differed after showing “My Green Pet”.”

To create an interactive plant, a research group at Keio University has connected plant twigs to motors, sensors and a microphone and enables them so to react to their environment.

What do you think? Would you like to have a green pet plant?