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My Life is Crap

Flashblack

3/27/2015

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Posted from my phone at the Texas Genetics Society annual meeting in Dallas.
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Throwback Third Thursday - March 2015

3/19/2015

 
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.
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3.141592653

3/13/2015

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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:
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Sister: We can't figure it out... Square root of negative one two to the third power sigma pie didn't sounds right... Ugh.

Me: You're not nerdy enough to get it I guess. √-1 = i (imaginary #), 2^3 = 8, sigma is the symbol for the sum, and pi you got. So it says...."i 8 sum pi... and it was delicious". You've just been geeked! 
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).
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Panda Porn

3/10/2015

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Photo c/o the San Diego Zoo Facebook Page
Bai Yun and Gao Gao got it on today, bow chica bow wow! This time last year Bai and Gao did the nasty but Bai didn't get pregnant. That could be because of her age. If Bai Yun has another cub she will be the oldest panda on record to give birth (she was only 1 day off with the birth of Xiao Liwu). Bai Yun is a healthy panda and has always been a great mom so I have faith she might have one more round in her! Zoo staff will now be keeping a close eye on Bai Yun's behavior and hopefully future vet checks will result in an ultrasound of cub #7.
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The Circle of Life

3/9/2015

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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!
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A Little Rarity

3/2/2015

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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.

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Where did all the white lions go for 13 years?

If we think of this as a simple Mendelian trait, when a carrier mates with a carrier they have a 25% chance of creating a white cub and a 50% chance of creating more carriers.  When a carrier mates with a full tawny they have a 50% chance of carriers. So, for 13 years, the recessive allele was 'hiding.' Because the white lion didn't disappear completely, this means that the carriers either weren't breeding with other carriers or when they did, neither of them passed along the recessive allele to the same cub (the other 75%).

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!
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    Caitlin Curry

    I am a biologist and my life is crap!

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