Check Out These Crystals I Found In An Acidic Urine - Uric Acid Crystals?

Church of Whale Fall

ID credit: divingfirst on 小红书

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You are extraordinary

One of a kind and yet

Millions of ones

Ever changing

You are the heartbreak

And the heartbeat

You are the master

And the student

You are evolution

And stability

You are the life

And the spark

And the answer

And the question

And in the times that you feel lost

Please remember all of these things

That make you

Extraordinary

Crazy angry reactive lymphocyte in someone with EBV infection

Who doesn't love a good ole PAS stain?

Ft some lovely Cryptococcus organisms

Today’s Friend from Borneo is the Bornean Tree-hole Frog (Metaphrynella sundana)! He is singing his Beautiful Song from his hole in the middle of a tree! (Bonus Crested Toad (Ingerophrynus divergens)!)

January was challenging and hectic, but February has been pleasant so far.

Some of you may be familiar with model organisms in biology but even so, you may think about mice, rabbits or flies rather than ctenophores. The whole purpose of having a model organism is to be able to understand particular biological functions/processes by using an organism that can be maintained easily, has a relatively short generation time and has its genome sequenced (this allows us to really understand their genetic makeup). Since this species of ctenophore (Mnemiopsis leidyi) has had its genome sequenced it allows us to identify key genes/proteins and try to determine their function.

The work I am currently doing for my project is focused on understanding the origin of the nervous system.

There's been a long standing debate amongst scientists over which species of animal first diverged from all other metazoans whether it be sponges or ctenophores. For a long time it has been thought that sponges are the sister group to all metazoans, although more recently studies have suggested that ctenophores are. Sponges are really simple animals that lack nervous systems, whereas ctenophores are more complex and have a nervous system. If ctenophores are then in fact found to be the sister group to all other metazoans, it poses the questions about whether the complex structures such as neurons and synapses evolved once or multiple times independently?

If you check you can see a diagram showing what I mean by the "sister group" to all metazoans. The first pic identifies sponges as the sister group, but with more analysis on a molecular basis, the 3rd pic could be possible.

Since most of the studies on neurons and nervous systems more generally are focused on metazoans, the work at this lab uses ctenophores to understand more about their complex biology with the aim of understanding the origins of neurons.