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 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...

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 ...

Hi, Today I'm going to share something about TB! TB - Tuberculosis is generally caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis.  The most common symptom of TB is "non -stop" cough! They say, many people in India are "carrier" of the bacteria, but not the disease! Oh God! if you are in India, better go and check for this bacteria! The possibility of the spread of the disease could be due to unhygienic conditions! You spit in public places? you sneeze? cough? No problem, you can sneeze or cough, but be careful! Careful coughing? careful sneezing? yes, you might spread the population this mycobacterium you are carrying (you need not have TB), so, be careful in sneezing and coughing! Okay, let us come to the point, I started typing this with a view of giving an overview about "the diagnosis of Tuberculosis". The most common test used for checking TB is "Tuberculin Skin Test". Let me explain you how this is done! Tuberculin Skin Test! Let us firs...

Hi, DNA computing, this is a topic in which my professor asked me and my friend  to give a lecture. We gave our best and here you can find a summary of our lecture. DNA computing: It's computing with the use of DNA, in stead of the normal microprocessors used. Why DNA or cells or biological molecules for computation? I could give you three major reasons: 1) Large storage capacity 2) High parallelism 3) Speed Large Storage capacity : DNA could store large information comparing the normal storage devices used like CDs. If we store the information in DNA in CDs and arranga it like a thread. That thread could round the Earth by 374 times!!!! Can you imagine the capcity of DNA now? High parallelism:  DNA could process in several ways parellely. Speed:  All biological reactions happen with in seconds. So, using biological molecules can increase the speed of computing to a greater extent. Okay, but, how biological molecules could be used f...

Hi, During the last practical exams I shared my experience. (Read here) I shared certain questions with answers which the examiner asked me during the practicals. Even this time, I'm going to share a few questions and answers with you. Here we go, This time I had 2 lab exam (Practicals), number one - Bio informatics and two - Molecular biology. Let us start with the Bio informatics lab. Bio informatics:   In this Bio info practicals, we were provided with two exercises - one must be done using various bio info tools such as Clustal W, T-coffee, BLAST P, BLAST-N, PHYLIP etc., The other exercise is PERL programming! :( :'(  The first exercise using tools is very simple, but, I find the programming, let it be any programming, it's very difficult :'( Even in the model practicals, I couldn't debug the program :( So, I worked really hard to learn the PERL! I was working with my lap for a whole day. And atlast, I got good confidence that I could write my own pro...

Hi, Agarose gel electrophoresis In the previous post I explained how to quantify DNA, and now we can find the molecular weight of that extracted DNA. But, how? Simple, you need to run an agarose gel! Preparation of agarose gel: Agarose gel must be prepared based on the DNA we are going to run. For example: if you are going to run Genomic DNA, you must use 0.6%gel, for plasmid DNA, you must use 0.8% gel, for PCR(Polymerase chain reaction) sample, you must use 1.2% gel. You may ask, why three different % of gels? The answer for your question is: Genomic DNA will be bulkier than pDNA - so, we must use a gel with less percentage, so that the pore size will be greater and the genomic DNA can move easily. In case of PCR sample, the gene amplified won't be bulky, so, it moves fast, very fast in low percent gel, that's why to have an optimum speed we use a higher percentage of gel comparatively. And, when our aim is to separate two sequences with relatively equal size...

Hi, I explained the principle behind the extraction of pDNA in my last post. Extracted the DNA, what next? Let us quantify the DNA extracted. How to quantify? Very simple, all you need is Spectrophotometer. Just take 1 microliter of your DNA extract in an eppendorf, make it upto 500 microliter with nanopure water. (else 1000, or any desired volume) mix it well Now, put this into a quartz cuvette (0.5ml), measure the O.D value at 260 nm. Use blank as nano pure water. Note: The path length of the cuvette must be 1cm. Okay, we got the O.D value now, how to get the concentration of your DNA? It's very simple, do the following calculation. If your O.D. Value is 1, then, the concentration of your DNA sample is 50 microgram/ml so, now, if your concentration = obtained O.D.( let it be 0.5) * 50 microgram/ml * Dilution factor How to calculate the dilution factor?  Simple! here your dilution factor is 500/1 i.e., 500 micro liter contains 1 micro liter of DNA, you can calcu...