Posted from my phone at the Texas Genetics Society annual meeting in Dallas.
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This month is a twofer! Throwback Third Thursday (#tbtt) looks back to last week when I reused my formal dress from my sophomore year of college (left) to dress up as pre-Fairy Godmother Cinderella for the opening of Disney's Cinderella (right)! Sometimes it totally pays off that I'm a pack rat that doesn't get rid of anything remotely costumey.
Today is a pretty nerdy day. Specifically at 9:26.53AM. Why? Because the abbreviated date (minus the "20" of 2015) will be pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, taken to 10 places! Happens only once every 100 years, so nerd it up and eat some pie (and if you're really nerdy use pi to figure how just how much pie you ate.... or just eat some pie). Email conversation between my sister and me on May 3, 2013 after sending her this graphic over Pinterest:
3/14/15 9:26.53 is almost as nerdy as 10/10/10, when my physics class had a pizza party to celebrate the answer to life, the universe and everything (or 42 in binary).
I just wanted to share this nifty little pictorial example I found of trophic levels (aka what Mufasa talks to Simba about in the Lion King fondly referred to as "The Circle of Life"). Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba!
 A white lion cub, a very rare color morph, has been causing quite a stir amongst visitors a Kruger National Park in the Republic of South Africa (mostly because he's so darn cute). This little rarity is a member of the Satara Pride and is one of only 13 wild white lions. White lions are so rare that none were seen in the wild from the early 1990's until 2006. And since 2006, only 16 white lions have been born and in only 5 lion prides, all in the Kruger/Timbavati region. Why are they so rare? White lions are a result of leucism, or lack of pigment which results in light coat and eyes. In lions, leucism is caused by getting a copy of a gene which has a recessive mutation from both mom and dad. For two tawny lions (the typical brown/tan color) to have a white lion cub, both lions would have to be carriers of the recessive allele, meaning they have the recessive copy but they display the dominant one.
It is quite possible that the statistics are way more complicated and that there may even be more than one way to be 'white.' It has been speculated that light coat in white lions with yellow eyes may we caused by a different gene than in white lions with blue eyes (the TYR gene versus a gene similar to what creates white cats and white tigers). Genomic analysis of big cats is just beginning but don't you worry, we're getting to the bottom of it! |
Caitlin CurryI am a biologist and my life is crap! Subscribe!
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