Epic.. Laboratory Cartoons… #Microbiology #Biotechnology

Today I am sharing some funny laboratory Cartoons… so, get ready for a ride of Humor..

The first cartoon shows what not to eat from the Microbiology-fridge..

What about lemonade from the fridge which may turn out to be a plague culture?(Left) 

or fancy seeing our Microbe-Mammals created in the above Microbiology lab?(Right)

What an Eukaryote might had said after evolution to the prokaryote ancestor?(Left)

Zero Probability!!!

If we add together the three probabilities (that of amino acids being laid out correctly, that of their all being left-handed, and that of their all being joined by peptide links), then we come face to face with the astronomical figure of 1 in 10950. This is a probability only on paper. Practically speaking, there is zero chance of its actually happening. As we saw earlier, in mathematics, a probability smaller than 1 in 1050 is statistically considered to have a "zero" probability of occurring.

Even if we suppose that amino acids have combined and decomposed by a "trial and error" method, without losing any time since the formation of the earth, in order to form a single protein molecule, the time that would be required for something with a probability of 10950 to happen would still hugely exceed the estimated age of the earth.

The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that evolution falls into a terrible abyss of improbability even when it comes to the formation of a single protein.

Are you Confused to differentiate between “impossible” and “zero probability”?

Let’s consider the following game: I write down a random real number between 0 and 1, and ask you to guess it. What’s the probability that you guess it correctly? The answer is zero. You might wonder: “But it’s possible for me to guess the correct answer! That means that the probability has to be more than zero!” and you would be justified in wondering, but you’d be wrong. It’s true that events that are impossible have zero probability, but the converse is not true in general. In the rest of this post, i show why the answer above was in fact zero, and why this doesn’t need to do irreparable damage to your current worldview.

Edward Jenner:An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae

Edward Jenner (1749-1823)

All we know that Edward Jenner who discovered vaccination was a greatest scientist in the branch of Immunology. In 1796, Jenner’s discovery that inoculation with cowpox gave immunity to smallpox was an immense medical breakthrough and this discovery has saved countless lives.

A Letter of Lady Mary Montagu..

Of the greatest diseases of mankind, small pox was one of the most feared. Not only did it kill huge numbers of people, but also survivors were scarred for life with disfiguring pockmarks. Though this disease was so harmful and dangerous, from the beginning of the eleventh century, people started to find out its solution. In 1798, Edward Jenner, found out a technique for the removal of this disease, known as Vaccination, and he became famous. But prior to the discovery of vaccination by Jenner, protection against a severe or fatal case of small pox was generally achieved by giving subjects a mild (it was hoped) case of small pox by inoculation of the small pox virus. The introduction of this operation to England is created to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who noted that this was widely practiced in the  Orient. In 1718, Lady Mary Montagu, the wife of the English Ambassador in Constantinople, decided that the technique of Variolation should be used on her children. Her own face is said to have been scarred by smallpox, so she had a special interest in the disease. However, her portrait does not show this. Her chaplain tried to dissuade her on the grounds that the technique would be ineffective in Christians. Nevertheless, Lady Mary Montagu persisted, and her children were successfully protected…

An interesting story about 'Miss Marry Mallon' aka 'Typhoid Marry' and 'Typhoid Fever'.

Judith Walzer Leavitt

(Between 1986 & 1906 Marry Mallon worked as a cook in 7 homes in New York city. Twenty eight cases of Typhoid Fever occured in these homes while she worked in them.
As a result the New York city health deptartment arrested Marry n admitted to an isolation hospital on North Brother island, New York.

''The world is going mad at an accelerating rate and television is the Typhoid Marry of this madness''-Edward Robb Ellis

Part of the New York American article of June 20, 1909, which first identified Mary Mallon as "Typhoid Mary" credit: New York American, June 20, 1909

Examination of Marry's stool showed that she was shedding large numbers of Typhoid bacteria (Salmonella Typhi) though she exhibited no external symptoms of the disease.An article published in 1908 in the Journal of American Medical Association referred to her as 'Typhoid Marry', an epithet by which she is still known today. She released from isolation after she pledged not to cook for others or serve food to them.Then Marry changed her name and began to work as a cook again. For 5 yrs she managed to avoid capture while continuing to spred Typhoid fever. Eventually the authorities tracked her down.She was held in custody for 23 years until she died in 1938. As a lifetime carrier,Marry Mallon was positively linked with 10 outbreaks of Typhoid Fever,53 cases and 3 deaths.(courtesy @ishzz )

Awake …!!! What’s in your air?

Don’t breath without anxiety…!!! A tiny foes seeking of your lungs that are in your air!!! These are Mycobacterium… the obligate aerobic, Gram-resistant,non-motile, pleomorphic rods and intracellular pathogen. It causes tuberculosis, which is most common in the 3^rd world. Tuberculosis kills 3,000,000 people in the world every year, more than AIDS, malaria, and other tropical disease combined. One third of the world's population is infected with tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is the leading infectious disease cause of death and represents more than a quarter of the world's preventable deaths.

Evolutionary synthesis: Dramatic change in our worldview

It is rather strange to contemplate the fact that we have just celebrated the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species (Darwin, 1859) and the 200th jubilee of Darwin himself. Considering the profound and indelible effect that Origin had on all of science, philosophy, and human thinking in general, 150 years feels like a very short time.

What was so dramatic and important about the change in our worldview that Darwin prompted? Darwin did not discover evolution (as sometimes claimed overtly but much more often implied, especially in popular accounts and public debates). Many scholars before him, including luminaries of their day, believed that organisms changed over time in a nonrandom manner. Even apart from the great (somewhat legendary) Greek philosophers Empedokles, Parmenides, and Heraclites, and their Indian contemporaries who discussed eerily prescient ideas (even if, oddly for us, combined with mythology) on the processes of change in nature, Darwin had many predecessors in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In later editions of Origin, Darwin acknowledged their contributions with characteristic candor and generosity. Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus, and the famous French botanist and zoologist Jean-Bapteste Lamarck (Lamarck, 1809) discussed evolution in lengthy tomes.Lamarck even had a coherent concept of the mechanisms that, in his view, perpetuated these changes. Moreover, Darwin's famed hero, teacher, and friend, the great geologist Sir Charles Lyell, wrote about the "struggle for existence" in which the more fecund will always win. And, of course, it is well known that Darwin's younger contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace, simultaneously proposed essentially the same concept of evolution and its mechanisms.

However,

Virophage- Virus that eats virus

Viruses may cause disease but some can fall ill themselves. For the first time, a group of scientists have discovered a virus that targets other viruses. This new virus-of-viruses was discovered by Bernard La Scola and Christelle Desnues at the University of the Mediterranean, who have playfully named it Sputnik, after the Russian for "fellow traveller". It is so unique that they have classified it in an entirely new family – the "virophages" – in honour of the similarities it shares with the bacteriophage viruses that use bacteria as hosts.

fig. mavirus                                                                                          fig. virocapsid

The story of Sputnik started in 1992 with some dirty English water. A group of scientists were studying an amoeba taken from a cooling tower in Bradford, England, when they discovered a microscopic giant – a virus so large that it was originally mistaken for bacterium. It was only in 2003 that La Scola and colleagues conclusively showed that the new find was indeed a virus. But what a virus – APMV, or ‘mimivirus’, measures a whopping 400 nanometres across.

The Curious case of Bdellovibrio: Beware Bacterias!

In my class 12, our teacher was teaching us bacterial taxonomy. And, he said “Beware Escherichias, we are reading Bdellovibrio.” The first impression was it was some kind of Bacteriophage, but we were damned to hear that it was actually a bacteria. While I remembered the incident, I almost forgot the name of  the bacteria. It was untill yesterday, that I was reading about Virophage(sputnik.. isnt it a funny name?), I remebered what my teacher said then.

While surfing Internet I went thorough one blog, which read, “A mild ocean breeze plays over the water surface, dispelling any notion that danger lurks in the murky depths. However, a gruesome event is about to occur as a silent attacker speeds forth toward an unsuspecting victim. In a furious collision, the savage meets its target and whittles its way into the body of the innocent prey. Once inside, the transformation begins - the predator ceases its frenzy and prepares to multiply. The host is reduced to a protective cocoon, supplying food and shelter for the growing parasite. Within hours, the nourishment is drained and the ghost-like shell of the host bursts open to release a new generation of deadly predators. And all the while, the waters remain still...’’

This, actually summarizes what Bdellovibrio actually is. The Bdellovibrio (which literally means "curved leech") make a living by attacking and devouring other bacteria, and are found in diverse environments such as marine and fresh waters, sewage, and soil. The predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus eats its prey-larger bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, from the inside, an example of the imaginative lengths to which some prokaryotes will go to make a living.  Discovered in 1962, their lifestyle has made them hard to follow with conventional tools. It has typically two phases in its lifecycle, Attack phase and Growth Phase.