[fiercequeen23]

That moment when I remember how hilarious Star Trek can be.

And then remembering how the entire crew in DS9 shipped Sisko and Kasidy :D

(I’m watching DS9 “The Adversary”, S3E26)

[lasciate-ogni-speranza]

So I’ve been making my way through all the episodes of Star Trek. I only have one and a half seasons of Deep Space Nine left. 

I just watched Far Beyond the Stars which is episode 13 in season 6. If you ever wanted a reason to start watching Star Trek, watch this episode. I can’t tell you how amazing it is. Avery Brooks gives the best performance I have ever seen him give. 

Because that episode is what Star Trek is about. And I can’t get over every scene in this episode. I highly suggest watching it for yourself. You can read background information on it here: Far Beyond the Stars. 

[quillusquillus]

Went into episode called “House of Quark” with a groan, expecting lame klingon-themed storyline featuring Quark being goofy.

Came out grinning like a big fat dork at unexpectedly great episode.

[thelogicaltribble]

Trials and Tribble-ations

[troubledsigh]

ahhhhh quick somebody give me a good Bashir/Garak episode to watch?!?

i’ve seen the whole series so no worries about spoilers

[nursingisinmyblood]

[mucholderthen]

Synthetic Biology:  ’Actin Out ‘
Actin filaments Nucleated in Circle shapes on Glass Cover Slips 
Micropatterned Using Deep UV Lithography

Imaging by Anne-Cécile Reymann, Manuel Théry
Institut de Recherches en Technologies et Sciences pour le Vivant - Grenoble, France

When your hard drive fails, you order a new one online and then swap it out. Why can’t we do that for biological parts as well?  

Actin filaments (yellow) can be induced to polymerize by providing a pattern etched onto a glass surface.

Actin is the most abundant protein in most eukaryotic cells, and the protein most interactive with other proteins. It plays a key role in many cellular functions, from cell motility and the maintenance of cell shape and polarity to the regulation of transcription. [ X ]

IMAGES
Actin filaments are nucleated in circle shapes (20–40 µm microns in diameter) using micropatterning.  The location of actin nucleators is micropatterned onto a circle using deep UV lithography on a glass coverslip. Actin polymerization is then induced by applying actin monomers, profilin, and the Arp2/3 complex.

A dense and branched meshwork of filaments assemble on the circle (bright yellow) while non-branched filaments grow out of the circle and form parallel bundles.

7% of actin monomers are labelled with Alexa568, which allows the filaments to be imaged with classical epifluorescence microcopy at 40x.

Source: Cell

[nursingisinmyblood]

[bpod-mrc]

19 October 2013

Heart Makers

With so many people in need of heart transplants and not enough donors, scientists are trying to grow replacement hearts in the lab. First, they strip away cells from a recently deceased heart to leave a scaffold of structural proteins. Pictured is a ‘decellularized’ human heart, the framework that researchers then seed with precursor cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells – adults cell reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state that can become any type of cell. Finally, they nurture this mixture in a chamber that mimics conditions in the body, including the beating sensation. One group has already made rat hearts that pump with as much as 25 percent of normal capacity. And although the creation of fully functional whole human hearts is still a long way off, researchers could soon make transplant-ready replacement parts, such as valves, or use similar techniques to repair small areas of damage in situ.

Written by Daniel Cossins

—

Harald Ott
Harvard University, USA
Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature Copyright 2011 
Nature Medicine (19), 646–651