A Butterfly and Biotechnology

Dear readers, I apologize that I stopped writing since last year. I don't have any great excuse other than poor planning. I was lost on my way to understand marine biology. As you might be knowing, I switched field, moved from my focus over bacteria and human disease related studies to climate change and marine biology. However, my research focus continues to be in molecular biology. Long story short, I was learning all about climate change, ocean acidification, ocean, marine animals in the past year. I even learnt how to spawn and culture oysters. How cool is it? Not cool?! Well, I think it is cool!  I can setup mini Ocean acidification systems which mimics the future acidified ocean conditions; I even gained some plumbing related skills. This was totally a new experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, I had a tough summer in a rural fishing village in China, learning how to grow oysters from the Chinese oyster farmers (for those who do not know what I am doing: I ...

Neih hou!  Don't roll you eyes wondering what it is! "Neih hou" is how you say "hello" in Cantonese. Guess what, I am in Hong Kong and therefore the language Cantonese. I came to Hong Kong this summer as an intern before officially joining as a PhD Student. This is my second experience abroad, far away from home, new language, new culture, I expected me to have a "really" bad cultural shock, but, actually I experienced only 50% of what I expected. For a girl who have used the marina beach only for eating "sundal", bikini in beach was a shock (FEEL FREE TO JUDGE ME!). The first time, I went to the big wave beach here, I was the only one who was totally covered, when everyone was enjoying their Beer, I was slowly sipping my lemon juice (THE ODD ONE OUT!). I realized how beautifully different the world outside is! There is no single standard for right or wrong, it varies in different countries, in different regions around the world. And it ...

Hi there! (am using Whatsapp) :D When I started writing this, I wanted to start with a "Hi" and suddenly, the famous Whatsapp status came into my mind! :P See, am really addicted to Whatsapp nowadays, changing DP and Status often. Oof, I should stop writing whatsapp status and start writing here. (This is NO ADvertisement for Whatsapp :P) In the last post, I said that I'm in the USA doing research and now, am back in India after successfully completing the internship! Yaaai, back home, back home! It feels good when you are in home, yes, am happy to be home. But, sometimes, its good to visit places and learn new things, leaving home. Let's come to the purpose of this post now! In this post, am gonna share few things I learnt from my internship. I was basically cloning different fusion proteins and was doing invitro degradation studies of those cloned proteins using western blots. I've done cloning before, when I was doing my under graduation (UG), but,...

Hi dear sweet lovely reader, Didn't meet you for a long time... Just after complaining about the stipend problem in the last post, I actually wanted to write a lot here, but, couldn't find time (Such a lazy girl, I am!). As you might be knowing, the author (me) is the butterfly here :P And, I flew for the first time!! YEAH! I FLEW! I flew like a butterfly! It was an awesome experience flying for the very first time! (ow, no! I dint put a trans-gene in my body and fly after getting  a pair of wings, but with a passport and VISA). I'm this girl, full of dreams wishing to do "this", "that" and "all kind of stuffs that one can do". And, one among those dreams was to fly one day! TO FLY FREE!(I mean, not free of cost :P, but liberation) I always wanted to fly in those big, big airplanes, but, I always have avoided that mode of transport. Reason? Obviously, it would burn a big hole in my dad's pocket (actually he can afford if I wan...

Hi readers, I got an idea! (Bulb glows bright!) Yes, an idea to meet all my blog readers if you want to! How cool! What? Are you asking me to stop!? Oh? yes? Are you asking me, "What is the relation between this IDEA and the title of the post AVIDADHAM'15?". Wait, dears. There is a correlation. This idea to meet you all is a function of Avidadham'15! To put it in a mathematical expression :  Idea = f(Avidadham'15)   :P :D This is the result of doing so much Math for semester exams. Okay, coming to the point, What is avidadham'15? Avidadham'15 is an International Conference organised by the Department of Biotechnology, Anna University, Chennai. I think, now you might have got the point. Yes, I'm a post graduate student in the department and I welcome you all to Avidadham'15. It is for 3 days! It will be fun for all research and science lovers, so, all my bacteria lovers, come and join us!  You can meet international and national...

Hi readers, It feels so good to write here, after a long (so long, in fact) gap. How are you all doing? I’m doing great, did you know, I have now joined M.Tech (Biotechnology) in Anna University, Chennai. And, after 20 years of life under the warmth of my parent’s wings, I have finally managed to spread my own wings, out of home. Yes, I have come out of my kutty (small) town, to a big city – Chennai. It feels good in one way but the other? No! It’s not feeling so good the other way. After coming here, I have realized that I was away from the so much polluted world for 20 years. This place, because of tremendous industrial development and stuffs, is polluted extremely, that you should cover your head, face, hands, foot, literally, all your body parts except eyes to keep you clean and safe from the poisonous, dusty, dirty air! Ah, forgot, you should wear big coolers to protect your eyes too. Sometimes, it feels like there is not more than 10% of O 2 in the air! Villages, towns – Rur...

I don't know why, but, I really love this guy! :P Yes, he is PCR! You ask me anything, like, what technique we can use for introducing mutation? what for diagnosis? I'll answer PCR for all! :P Let me talk about him for sometime here. PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) is used for amplifying any gene from a given sample using Taq polymerase, dNTPs, Primers and buffers. After PCR the amplified product or amplification is generally checked by running an Agarose gel electrophoresis. But, in case of Real Time PCR there is no need for running gels as the progress of the PCR is monitored online with the help of fluorophores. Generally SYBR Green dye, Taqman or molecular beacon probes are used for Real Time PCR. In SYBR Green method, the fluorophore binds with the double stranded DNA and produces fluorescence, and hence as the amplification increases, fluorescence increases, but the fluorophore has no specificity and hence, even if the amplified product is not the product of your inter...

Knock Out mouse is a genetically modified mouse in which a particular gene is removed or inactivated. As a particular gene (which encodes for a particular protein) is inactivated, the mouse shows changes in external features or physical and biochemical characteristics.  The first recorded knock out mice was produced in 1989 for which Martin Evans and Oliver Smithies were awarded Nobel Prize. The various reasons for producing knock out mice are ·        To understand the function of a gene ·        To understand various diseases which are due to alterations or mutations in genes ·        It gives an idea for understanding and treating various diseases ·        To develop and test various drugs produced Some of the diseases which are widely studied using mouse models are neuronal diseases like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer...

Whenever I'm made to realise that I'm not clear enough or good at something, I try to make myself clear with it. It happened today, during my laboratory examination, I was asked to perform monocyte isolation from a given blood sample, but, unfortunately, I was not very clear with the principle behind it.(but, still I managed to complete the experiment as I know the protocol, but, knowing the principle behind each step of the protocol clearly is very important, isn't it?). But, nothing is wrong in it, I made myself clear with it now. That's good, right? So, let me share with you some basic principle and protocol for isolating monocyte from blood sample. For isolating monocytes, initially we must isolate PBMC (Peripheral bood mono nuclear cells) from the blood sample. Here, let us make few terminologies clear before starting with the principle. Peripheral blood sample  - It is the blood sample obtained from acral areas of body (in general, it is the blood collected ...

Though there are several protein assays available, the most preferred one in many laboratories is "Lowry assay". It is effective in the concentration range of 0.01 mg/ml to 1 mg/ml. And, as an additional info, the paper published describing the procedure and principle of Lowry Assay is the most cited paper in the scientific history. (Feeling like, "Wow! I want to publish one to compete with Oliver.H. Lowry"???  :P) Why Lowry?   Though there are several other protein assays, mostly Lowry assay is used in many laboratories. The reasons for preferring Lowry are: sensitivity of the assay, highly reproducible, cost effective, easy to perform. Biuret assay is generally used for higher protein concentrations like tissue samples but, Lowry for less concentrated samples and hence used in most of the molecular biology laboratories where there will be need for assaying comparatively less concentrated protein samples (in most cases where we attempt to produce enzymes). Oth...

It's been a long time, since I wrote a post here. Finally, final year of my course and so very busy :) with books! And now, got time to share with you. As you know already (don't know?, then get to know :P ), I use to have favorite subjects in each semester, third semester it was microbiology, then in fourth semester, it was cell biology, fifth was molecular biology, sixth was genetic engineering and now i'm in seventh semester, but, you know what, I don't have a favorite subject!!! Don't worry that I lost interest, instead, I got 3 favorite subjects - Immunology, Animal biotechnology and Plant Biotechnology! It's awesome this time to have more than one favorite subject and here I'm gonna tell you something about, cre-lox system which is most widely used for making modifications (mostly deletions). These modifications can be done at a specific tissue alone by using a tissue specific promoter i.e., you can selectively knock out a particular gene in partic...

Let it be any disease, ranging from a fever (which is the symptom of many diseases) to HIV, diagnosis at an early stage is very important for giving specific treatment.Whenever I go to a doctor, he asks me things like, stomach pain, fever, body pain, head ache, running nose, throat pain etc., then, he checks pulse, then he uses his stethoscope, he then gives all the possible antibiotics! Yes, really, this happens in most cases. Then, if my problem is not fixing up in a week, he'll ask me to take a blood test, this, that, and, all! Nothing wrong in this, because he can't ask everyone coming to him to take blood test at the very first sitting, then, no one will visit him back saying he sucks out blood all the time! But, it is okay to have a blood test after a week, but, not after a month! Diagnosing a disease after it had reached a severe stage is comparatively less significant than diagnosing at an early stage. So, how to diagnose? Antigen - Antibody! Antigen and Antibody ...

Hi, dear readers, friends, it's been a long time, I wrote here. Sorry for that, was a bit busy in lab! And, you can be happy because of the fact that I was busy, as I got lots of experience to share with you! Let us first start with SDS PAGE! SDS PAGE - Sodium Dodecyl sulphate - Poly Acrylamide Gel Electrophoresis! This SDS PAGE is done for separating proteins based on their molecular weight. It is a widely used technique and it is very useful for having an idea about the expression of your protein of interest. Principle: The name SDS PAGE comes from the fact that this method uses SDS for making your protein uniformly negatively charged and of course, the gel is prepared using poly acrylamide. Why to make the protein negatively charged? Because, here our interest is to separate proteins based only on their molecular weight, but not based on charge and all proteins are not negatively charged like DNA (which is separated based on size using Agarose Gel electrophoresis ). SDS is ...

Oral cancer refers to cancer in any part of your mouth like tongue, lips, palate etc., Cancer may be due to various reasons like irritation due to continuous alcohol consumption, smoking, poor oral hygiene etc., And it can also happen due to Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). Human Papilloma Virus is a type of non enveloped virus (Papilloma) that can infect humans. They are classified generally as "High Risk" and "Low Risk" types. The high risk type HPV 16 is found to cause oro-pharyngeal cancer. Diagnosis: Generally biopsy is done where a small part of your tumor is removed and observed under microscope. The biopsy can be just cutting a small portion or it can also be done using brush for collecting the cells. After confirming the abnormality using this microscopic observation, further analysis is done for finding out the type of HPV which caused the oral cancer or to find whether the cancer is just because of alcohol/smoking. This further analysis can be d...

It was 24th December I believe! I just saw the details of the Indian Academy of Fellowship only a week before the last date. I decided to apply for it and just applied in a hurry actually, yes, it was really a hurry! I was done with everything and sent the application. I was waiting for the release of selected list of candidates from the first of March. They updated the selection list everyday but my name was not on the list till 25th of March! I used to go to the IAS website everyday and check the list, but, my name was not there in the selected list of candidates. I lost all my hope and decided that I won't get selected. But, it happened! I received a mail from the Academy after 25th of March! I was happy to the core, jumping up and down. Because, I was never out of my town from my child hood all alone. And, this fellowship was something really precious for me! I believed that this would change my destiny to a better place! I was happy till my father said "no" to th...

We are going to discuss here about three different typing! They are genotyping, phenotyping and karyotyping. Before learning about them let us learn what is genotype, phenotype and karyotype! Genotype, phenotype and karyotype Genotype refers to the genetic make up of an organism. Generally the genes of an organism. The genotype of an organism can be represented as BB or Bb or bb based on the gene. If a person is having two recessive CFTR genes, then he will be getting cytic fibrosis. Genotype of an organism has also effect over the phenotype. Thus, genotype is representing the alleles of a gene in general. Genotyping is generally done based on PCR or hybridization. Phenotype refers to the visible characters like structure, color and also the biochemical characters. This is based on the phenotype. Phenotyping can be done using biochemical assays. Karyotype refers to the number of structure of chromosomes in an organism. karyotyping is done by staining and visualising the cells...