
(from toothpaste for dinner.com)
T. gondi is a protozoan parasite. It lives definitively in cats but can be carried by all known mammals (this includes you and I). The disease is said to be toxoplasmosis and it it usually minor, but it can cause diseases of unborn babies, espeically in farm animals which can lead to abortion or still born babies. This is a major cause of animal loss in farming.
How can you get it? Well, you can get it from your cat (which is why kissing your pets is so disgusting, but you can also get it when your cat sleeps near your head, or you don't wash your hands etc). You can also get it from cured meats, or uncooked meats, or by not washing fruit and veg properly before eating them. Although we can obtain Toxoplasmosis, T. gondii only fulfills its entire reproductive life cycle inside a cat. This is why it is the definitive host.
So there are three bases in a codon. The third base is not bonded as tightly as the other two. You could think about it this way: if you have three monkeys, the first two are holding a hand and a foot but the third monkey is only holding hands with the last one. This means that it can wobble about a bit on its bond.
DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, is a long linear polymer of nucleotides (a nitrogenous base, a sugar, and a phosphate group) which form bonds resulting in a double helix.
Nucleotides are ingenious. There are only four different ones in DNA depending on which nitrogenous base is present. The four bases are Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Thymine (T) and Cytosine (C).
A,G,T and C form the letters of the genetic code depending on what order they are in. A can only bond with G and T can only bond with C. It requires 3 base pairs to code for an amino-acid (the building block of a protein), and these are called codons. A codon of TGG will code for the amino-acid Tryptophan. The combination of ATG will code for methionine.
Just one codon (any combination of any three A, T, C or G nucleotides) can code for a huge 64 amino acids combinations. But there are only 20 amino acids. Why is this?
The DNA code is said to be degenerate or redundant. This does not mean that is is out of work. It means that two combinations might code for the same amino acid, for example GCT, GCC, GCA and GCG all code for Alanine. The code is therefore degenerate but not ambiguous. As seen from this example, it is often the case that the first to bases are the same and the third one that differs.
There are two strands of DNA, like a zip, which have nucleotides (like the teeth of the zip) holding the strands together through hydrogen bonds.
The final stage of love is attachement- this is what keeps couples together and allows them to raise children. Crafty huh? the two main chemicals of this feeling are oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin is possibly the best hormone ever. It is released during sex, during childbirth and can actually stimulate milk flow by a woman just looking at her baby. If you block the release of oxytocin, then mothers reject their young. They form no attachment. It is also true then that couples having more sex stay together as attachement forms this way, and having a baby automatically forms an attachment between mother and child. I'm not sure what vasopressin (usually called ADH- controls kidney water balance and thirst) does in terms of attachement, but studies with voles have shown that if you take this hormone away then they lose devotion.
The second stage is attraction. This stage really kicks into your nervous system- it makes you release a number of neurotransmitters this time instead of hormones. These are adreneline, serotonin and dopamine. What do these three chemicals do to your brain?
Adrenaline increases your stress levels- it makes your heart beat fast and you start to sweat. Dopamine is the pleasure chemical (it actually does the same thing to your brain as cocaine and can make you feel focused and energetic). Serotonin is the special love chemical that makes you feel intensely happy and keeps you thinking about your lover. Strawberries and chocolate have high levels of serotonin and this is why it makes you extremely love sick eating strawberries on valentines day.
For the next three days I'm going to take all the fun out of love and make it scientific. The first stage is "Lust"
This is the first stage of love and is driven by the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen – in both men and women.
Testosterone is an interesting chemical. It is a steroid hormone which is secreted by adrenal glands and helps increase the red blood cell count (so you can be more energetic) as well as increasing libido.
Pheromones also play a role in the first stages of love, increasing attraction between two people. Sex pheromones are released when a female is ready for breeding. Perhaps this is why we feel more attractive at certain times of the month and why others find us more attractive. I also wonder if this is why males like young women whereas females don't like young men (well they do but the young men probably don't like them).



Welcome to 2009! How exquisite.
Armillaria ostoyae
The honey fungus is a cool being. It is a paracitic fungus which dwells mainly in trees and shrubs, but the most famous colony of this fungus is in the strawberry mountains. Why is it famous? Because it forms the largest organism by area in the world!! It does this because it is able to form rhizomophs ("boot strings") for great distances on the ground beneath the trees, so that it can consume multiple energy sources by decaying them. The largest colony covers about 9 km squared which is obviously larger than the great blue whale, and scientists reckon that the weight of it all might be over 600 tons. Another amazing thing about this little pile of mushrooms is that this particular colony is probable 2,400 years old. It is disputed whether or not it is actually one bug mushrooms (do the mycelium all connect?) but tests on various areas show identical genetic make up. If it's not all one organism though, it's still the largest area of identical colonies.
Pika pika :-D
I love these little creatures. Unfortunately they are becoming endangered due to climate change- their thick fur which is so useful for keeping warm in cold weather is a hindrance in warming weather. They usually spend their time scampering over rocks and hiding their meals underneath stones so that eagles can't find them. Unfortunately moving uphill to colder altitudes is not an option because it doesn't have the right vegetation for the pikas to thrive.
As a species they are related most closely to rabbits and hares, as they are of the order largomorphs which contains both the families Leporidae (hares and rabbits) and Ochotondae (the pikas).

Thou shall have a fishy on a little dishy... or lots of fishies. This is Tom's fishy bowl :-) Ceramic paints (who thought of marking up the price of ceramic paint so high???) on...er... ceramic.


I dissected a mouse :-D but i don't think you want to see photos of that. Actually you might do, but i dont have any because we weren't allowed to take any. Apparently, it's not very nice to take photos of the mouse. Hello? You're chopping it up with a pair of scissors? has it died in vain? Strange people biologists. The other reason is that we "weren't taking photos for any education purposes". I beg to differ. I have a purpose for my photos!
I'm bored and lonely. So here are some pretty bunnies.


So we did some starfishes too!!!!!! I have dissection photos of them also. Basically you had to cut it in half, scrape out the stomach (ours was a fatty, obviously just eaten... tons of sick in it=gross) and examine the internal structures. The sea star has stomach in all five legs, so when you scrape it out you get a hollowish case. They're not squishy to the touch as you might think either, pretty tough, they took a bit of chopping.


As fate would have it, I actually saw a praying mantis today!!!!!!! It was eating a cricket, the size of itself. Just munching the head off. Mantis are COOL! There are about 2,000 different species and some of them can grow six inches long. The name "mantis" comes from the Greek word for 'prophet' or 'soothsayer' and it's given this name because when it is looking sweet and innocent, it puts its legs together like it is praying (and then it eats the bug). The main reason why I wouldn't want to meet a giant mantid is because they almost always start eating their prey alive.
Here's a picture of the one in a pot.

Since I had something in my eye this morning, I'm going to talk about eyes today.
Eyes are pretty cool, they help us see, and relieve emotions when we cry. All the time our lacimal glands are producing a watery substance containing citric acid (yes like in oranges) and lysozyme amongst otherthings (like a lot of water). It basically keeps your eyes moist so they don't dry out, and the lysozyme is a chemical which breaks down any bacteria which might drop into your eye. It doesn't constantly dribble out of your eye due to the lacrimal duct where it runs away to. If you have problems with your ducts or your glands, this is when you end up having watery eyes and it constantly running down your face. There are some pretty cool optical illusions here. Every being has different eyes slightly, some animals can see different colours to us, their eyes recepting different wave lengths of light, some animals can only see in black and white. Insects have really cool freaky eyes which my friend and I decided looked like aztec hats. This mantis has very cool eyes.
It's fireworks night! and the sky is filled with coloured stars... but how about the sea?
Linckia laevigata Phylum: Echinodermata
Class: Asteroidea
Order: Valvatida
This 12 inch bright blue sea star of the family Ophidiasteridae is rather spectacular in itself. As an omnivore, it inhabits coral reefs and sea grass beds in the tropical Indo-Pacific shallow waters where it defies predetors (like pufferfish, harlequin shrimps and some sea anemones) by self mutation- autonomy- as it's form of asexual reproduction. Basically it can lose it's arms to become a "comet" (a stray tenticle) and this grows four little stubs on it which can mature to be full arms!
Sorry about the long break... I was distracted and uninspired. However having started my course as a biologist, i may be re-inspired. So here's a bacterium I made.

the-queen-of-spades on deviantART
*cleanup* has meant that old posts have gone. Any that I thought were worth keeping have gone on the funny pictures page. For more funny pictures click hereNot much going on, just been tidying up a bit because this page was getting messy.
Friendly bacteria by ~the-queen-of-spades on deviantART
Thanks to: http://www.meduseld.btinternet.co.uk for the fantastic webdesign. coupondeal.co.uk:|: