Tango and samba
Howdy folks!
Long time no post. Ok, ok, I admit it, I was too lazy to write a proper post… But I have great news! I started my experiments in the lab, and so far I managed not to screw up entirely the whole thing! Let’s see what the results will be…
For those who want to know, I’ll explain briefly what my research is about. Those who are not interested may skip to the following paragraph, and go directly to the reason why I named this post Tango and Samba. Well, I’m working with Dictyostelium discoideum, which is a cellular slime mold, also called social amoeba. Why social? This interesting little bugger has a somewhat complex life cycle. It undergoes vegetative growth living independently in soil and god knows where else, predating on innocent wandering bacteria. When it starves, however, this microbial lone wolf starts to emit signals of cyclic AMP (don’t ask me what THAT is), and cells start to aggregate and form a slug that actually moves towards better conditions, ie, towards light and away from ammonia. When these conditions are reached, they form fruiting bodies, with 20 % of the cells in the aggregate forming a sterile stalk and the other 80% or so, forming spores which are held aloft by the stalk in structures called sorus. Now, my biologist friends, you already see the point here, don’t you? It’s all very fine to die in the stalk and not go on to the next generation if all cells in the aggregate are in fact of the same clone (remember they divide several times, so cells aggregating may all be the same, essentially). But what if the cells in the aggregate come from different clones? They would be dying to help others that may not be related to them. And in fact the joining of different clones in an aggregate (technically determined “chimaerism”) is possible! And different clones co-occur in nature, although chimaeric fruiting bodies have not been reported in nature, because they are quite difficult to get, sensitive little things they are. Also, cheating has been reported with lab strains. This means that some clones actually work their way to become preferentially spores rather than stalk, leaving the other clone to do the dirty work of dying in the stalk. So, what I’m doing is seeing in what way the relatedness between cells in an aggregate influences the success of these cheater strategies, and I hope to see that increasing levels of relatedness will decrease the success of cheaters. How I’m going to manipulate relatedness exactly is enough for another post. I’ll tell you when I know if it works… Because Dicty doesn’t have a sexual stage… So I can’t simply cross them, so we’re going about it in another way, which I’m not sure it will work. Anyway…
Tango!!!!!! I’m having tango lessons. I never really was a tango person, but a friend of Clea’s is giving tango lessons for free for some people, and all we have to do is pay for the space, which ends up being 1.5 dollars each! Bargain!!! Heel goedkoop!!! Therefore, I’m there, to learn how to tango… Against my expectations I really like it. I thought it would be very complicated from the start, because I had already once tried tango, and it seemed extremely complicated, and a good way to end up with a twisted foot and your face in the floor. But she started from the very beginning. We learned that tango is a matter of balance between two people. It seems as the dancers are actually pushing each other, but no, it’s all a matter of each dancer leaning forward and putting his weight slightly in the upper part of the body, but never so much that he or she loses his balance if the other person moves away. This way the woman feels where the man is going to move, and when, and moves along with him, predicting his steps. Isn’t it beautiful?? It’s hard to actually give up on looking at my feet, but that’s rule number one, in any dance. Never ever ever EVER look at your feet, or your partner’s feet. A good analogy is that when I first started driving I always had to look at the gear to see if I was putting the correct one. Soon I realized that only made it easier for me to crash against a tree. Same for dancing!! The tango lessons are also a nice place to meet other people, and it’s always fun to watch the others making a fool of themselves in these very early stages of learning a dance… Ehehe. Of course, I also make a fool of myself, but at that moment I’m not watching. J
Speaking of learning new dances, I am also going to start learning belly dancing. Again, it’s a friend of Clea’s who is giving lessons for free. I heard she is quite good, so I will see how it goes. At least it will give me a good excuse to shake my booty!
Samba!!!! I don’t think I mentioned it here before, but there is a Brazilian teacher here at Rice University. She teaches Portuguese (now, now, Portuguese people out there, don’t frown… I know what y’all thought just right now!!), and she is an extremely nice person. She is the typical Brazilian that we, Portuguese, now from the soap operas. Very friendly, very cheerful, charming and pretty! Also she has a strong faith in God and communicates directly with Santa Marta. Ehehehe, this actually reminds me of a LOT of soap opera characters. But she is a very sweet person, she has 3 daughters and her husband is American, but they all speak perfect Portuguese. They suffer from the immigrant syndrome, though. Their conversations are half English, half Portuguese, although they are fluent in both. I’ve seen this so many times in Portuguese emigrated in France, spending their summer holidays in Portugal, that it has become a joke. “Michel, tu vas tomber!!! Nao te disse que ias cair, meu idiota?!” But I see it now as a sign of a very difficult struggle… People really try to cling to their own cultural identity but it’s difficult because slowly the culture of the country where you are also becomes your own… and then you’re this cultural hybrid that no one really understands except for other freaks like you. Really!! It’s a pain. I’m already a Portuguese-Dutch hybrid, in fact… Some people in Portugal already think I have a not-so-Portuguese attitude, but for the Dutch I’ll never have a totally Dutch attitude. Argh… Anyway! This teacher organizes a weekly lunch for Portuguese speakers at Rice and this Sunday she invited us all to her house that is where Judas lost his boots (direct translation from Portuguese, you shouldn’t miss these expressions, they are the best…), to have brazilian “feijoada”. That’s black beans with all sorts of meat, cabbage, rice, farofa (no translation found), etc… Yummiiiii, in summary. The food was really great, and it reminded me of home, because we eat a lot of brazilian food in Portugal. I got the chance to speak my language and try to convince all the Brazilians there that Portugal was a beautiful country. The people in general are all really nice, and maybe I will ask one day that they teach me how to dance samba properly, since my way is just a cheap imitation. But I think you have to be born in Brazil to have samba in your blood. Ah, Brazil, Brazil… So I leave you with the group photo of the lunch (many people, so I won’t tell you who all of them are, even I don’t know!!), and with a song by Chico Buarque, for me simply the best songwriter ever! This song celebrates a special event in Portugal (the revolution on 25th April 1974) and wishes for a connection between the 2 countries, for a breath of rosemary to travel across the ocean…
For those who want to know, I’ll explain briefly what my research is about. Those who are not interested may skip to the following paragraph, and go directly to the reason why I named this post Tango and Samba. Well, I’m working with Dictyostelium discoideum, which is a cellular slime mold, also called social amoeba. Why social? This interesting little bugger has a somewhat complex life cycle. It undergoes vegetative growth living independently in soil and god knows where else, predating on innocent wandering bacteria. When it starves, however, this microbial lone wolf starts to emit signals of cyclic AMP (don’t ask me what THAT is), and cells start to aggregate and form a slug that actually moves towards better conditions, ie, towards light and away from ammonia. When these conditions are reached, they form fruiting bodies, with 20 % of the cells in the aggregate forming a sterile stalk and the other 80% or so, forming spores which are held aloft by the stalk in structures called sorus. Now, my biologist friends, you already see the point here, don’t you? It’s all very fine to die in the stalk and not go on to the next generation if all cells in the aggregate are in fact of the same clone (remember they divide several times, so cells aggregating may all be the same, essentially). But what if the cells in the aggregate come from different clones? They would be dying to help others that may not be related to them. And in fact the joining of different clones in an aggregate (technically determined “chimaerism”) is possible! And different clones co-occur in nature, although chimaeric fruiting bodies have not been reported in nature, because they are quite difficult to get, sensitive little things they are. Also, cheating has been reported with lab strains. This means that some clones actually work their way to become preferentially spores rather than stalk, leaving the other clone to do the dirty work of dying in the stalk. So, what I’m doing is seeing in what way the relatedness between cells in an aggregate influences the success of these cheater strategies, and I hope to see that increasing levels of relatedness will decrease the success of cheaters. How I’m going to manipulate relatedness exactly is enough for another post. I’ll tell you when I know if it works… Because Dicty doesn’t have a sexual stage… So I can’t simply cross them, so we’re going about it in another way, which I’m not sure it will work. Anyway…
Tango!!!!!! I’m having tango lessons. I never really was a tango person, but a friend of Clea’s is giving tango lessons for free for some people, and all we have to do is pay for the space, which ends up being 1.5 dollars each! Bargain!!! Heel goedkoop!!! Therefore, I’m there, to learn how to tango… Against my expectations I really like it. I thought it would be very complicated from the start, because I had already once tried tango, and it seemed extremely complicated, and a good way to end up with a twisted foot and your face in the floor. But she started from the very beginning. We learned that tango is a matter of balance between two people. It seems as the dancers are actually pushing each other, but no, it’s all a matter of each dancer leaning forward and putting his weight slightly in the upper part of the body, but never so much that he or she loses his balance if the other person moves away. This way the woman feels where the man is going to move, and when, and moves along with him, predicting his steps. Isn’t it beautiful?? It’s hard to actually give up on looking at my feet, but that’s rule number one, in any dance. Never ever ever EVER look at your feet, or your partner’s feet. A good analogy is that when I first started driving I always had to look at the gear to see if I was putting the correct one. Soon I realized that only made it easier for me to crash against a tree. Same for dancing!! The tango lessons are also a nice place to meet other people, and it’s always fun to watch the others making a fool of themselves in these very early stages of learning a dance… Ehehe. Of course, I also make a fool of myself, but at that moment I’m not watching. J
Speaking of learning new dances, I am also going to start learning belly dancing. Again, it’s a friend of Clea’s who is giving lessons for free. I heard she is quite good, so I will see how it goes. At least it will give me a good excuse to shake my booty!
Samba!!!! I don’t think I mentioned it here before, but there is a Brazilian teacher here at Rice University. She teaches Portuguese (now, now, Portuguese people out there, don’t frown… I know what y’all thought just right now!!), and she is an extremely nice person. She is the typical Brazilian that we, Portuguese, now from the soap operas. Very friendly, very cheerful, charming and pretty! Also she has a strong faith in God and communicates directly with Santa Marta. Ehehehe, this actually reminds me of a LOT of soap opera characters. But she is a very sweet person, she has 3 daughters and her husband is American, but they all speak perfect Portuguese. They suffer from the immigrant syndrome, though. Their conversations are half English, half Portuguese, although they are fluent in both. I’ve seen this so many times in Portuguese emigrated in France, spending their summer holidays in Portugal, that it has become a joke. “Michel, tu vas tomber!!! Nao te disse que ias cair, meu idiota?!” But I see it now as a sign of a very difficult struggle… People really try to cling to their own cultural identity but it’s difficult because slowly the culture of the country where you are also becomes your own… and then you’re this cultural hybrid that no one really understands except for other freaks like you. Really!! It’s a pain. I’m already a Portuguese-Dutch hybrid, in fact… Some people in Portugal already think I have a not-so-Portuguese attitude, but for the Dutch I’ll never have a totally Dutch attitude. Argh… Anyway! This teacher organizes a weekly lunch for Portuguese speakers at Rice and this Sunday she invited us all to her house that is where Judas lost his boots (direct translation from Portuguese, you shouldn’t miss these expressions, they are the best…), to have brazilian “feijoada”. That’s black beans with all sorts of meat, cabbage, rice, farofa (no translation found), etc… Yummiiiii, in summary. The food was really great, and it reminded me of home, because we eat a lot of brazilian food in Portugal. I got the chance to speak my language and try to convince all the Brazilians there that Portugal was a beautiful country. The people in general are all really nice, and maybe I will ask one day that they teach me how to dance samba properly, since my way is just a cheap imitation. But I think you have to be born in Brazil to have samba in your blood. Ah, Brazil, Brazil… So I leave you with the group photo of the lunch (many people, so I won’t tell you who all of them are, even I don’t know!!), and with a song by Chico Buarque, for me simply the best songwriter ever! This song celebrates a special event in Portugal (the revolution on 25th April 1974) and wishes for a connection between the 2 countries, for a breath of rosemary to travel across the ocean…
posted at 9:48 AM
10 Comments:
Now we know why suddenly your name became Stella; too much influence of strange, dark and despicable molds...
By the way, can you really have any work done? With a social life like that I find it hard to believe... Anyway, hope those brasilian beans didn't give you a intestinal machine gun ;)
Lot's o' kisses
hi Ana! wow....that was a long read and a pleasure again :D nice project , nice dancing! Wauw, your project sounds very nice and clearcut! Must be quite strange to get used to the lab again or not? as for the dancing....oww....jsut not looking at the feet, that is the problem with my dancing ;)! it sounds really nice your time up there, and even speak your own language. Oef..we have to plan 1 salsa, 1 samba, 1 tango and an spanish/portugese and a theatersports evening a week when we come back :P greets
aniek
Hey, filipe, I tried to explain my experiment exactly so that no one has doubt about my hard work here... ;) Really! But you can't work 24 hours/day! The name Stela has historical reasons - I'm Stela in Luz e Sombra, which started long before, so that's my name in Blogger... And I like it! Stela, Estrela, it satisfies my vanity. Ehehe.
Aniek: theatersports, I miss it!!! Looking forward to another evening like last time!
Maya-cim: your iBook is very cool indeed. Thanks for the explanation on cAMP, they do show chemotaxis, like you said. As for your theories, it's true that if all cells in the slug are from the same clone, it's irrelevant who becomes spore or stalk. However, if there are 2 or more different clones in a mix, as you said, there may be natural selection favoring the clone that forms more spores. However, this is subject tho frequency dependent selection, a very interesting concept to me, meaning that the adaptive advantage of a strategy may change with the frequency of this strategy in the population. So, if the cheater clone increases in the population because it forms more spores, in the next generation (or some generations later) it will suffer (or it MAY suffer) from deficiency in dispersal because it doesn't form stalks... There aren't enough morons around to form stalks for him, get my meaning? This is what makes this system so interesting! How are these cheaters maintained, why have cheater control strategies not erradicated cheating? Etc.
Big kisses and hugs for everyone!
I'll just quote Maya: "What can I say?" Apart from the dancing and the brazilian feijoada, I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!
But I still love ya and miss ya **
Your Big Sister
ehehehe... o que a gente aprende neste blogue! Isto é um caldo de cultura. :) Não faço a mínima ideia do que estás a falar. Mas gosto do tango e do samba!
E a música está... uauauuuuu!
Beijinhos
[maya]
She really should know what cAMP is... I remember to see her in chemistry and biochemistry clases. On the other hand I can't say for sure if she was awake or not. You won't believe the boredom of those classes, the teachers were... well, no words can explain those "stupid dumb shit goddam motherfuckers". I have them some dust! (direct translation of: Tenho-lhes um pó!)
Lololol... Filipe: ssshhhhhh. The fact that I slept through most Biochemistry classes is not to be shared like that! Ehehehe. What else could be expected when all classes were at 13h00? After lunch, who can stay awake listening to a complete description of how the Krebs cycle works? Dude, that's impossible. :)
Ora bem, agora que já foi esclarecido o mistério “como poderia a Ana não saber o que era uma cAMP?” vejo-me obrigada a fazer de advogado do diabo e colocar-te a típica questão de todas as investigações: Em que é que a tua investigação vai contribuir para uma melhor sociedade/ planeta no futuro? Qual a aplicabilidade das possíveis conclusões a que irás chegar?
As respostas filosóficas do tipo “a ciência não ocupa lugar” não são válidas, ok?
Boas aulas e diverte-te! Também queria ter conhecimentos desses…
Beijinhos
Bom... Passei o dia todo no lab a olhar para placas de petri, por acaso hoje nao era o dia correcto para alguem me perguntar "olha la, e isso serve para que?"... mas vou tentar...
Se nao compreendes como os organismos evoluem, nao compreendes porque eh que eles sao hoje como sao, e porque eh que continuarao a mudar. Esse eh o primeiro ponto - evolucao. Considero a teoria da evolucao a teoria mais importante em Biologia, nem consigo ver uma sem a outra. Evolucao social - se nao compreendes a evolucao do comportamento social, nao compreendes porque eh que tantos organimos (inclusive nos) sao sociais. Do ponto de vista da aplicacao, por exemplo, podes querer conservar uma especie que tem comportamento social. Eh importante perceber ate que ponto o parentesco (relatedness) afecta o comportamento social destas criaturinhas, e se ao pegares num conjunto nao-relacionado de individuos, o que a partida ate parece uma boa ideia, podes desiquilibrar o sistema social desse grupo. Nem sei se tal caso existe, mas parece-me possivel, em casos em que a colaboracao entre individuos nao eh tao necessaria para sobreviver, mas traz vantagem se ajudares parentes. Por exemplo, a seleccao parental (kin selection) ate pode estar por tras da razao dos nossos avos viverem ate aos 70 e mais anos, muito depois de ja nao serem ferteis. Em principio, nao haveria seleccao para uma maior longevidade. Mas SE a sobrevivencia dos avos ate idade avancada influir no sucesso reprodutor dos filhos, isso implica que genes para a longevidade sao transmitidos a uma maior descendencia. Claro que a razao principal de todos vivermos agora ate aos 80, eh porque ha muitos mais remedios e curas para todas as doencas e mais algumas, mas nem todos chegam aos 80 capazes de cuidar dos netos!
Em relacao as minhas amibas, sao apenas um sistema simples para estudar evolucao social. Se coisas como altruismo e batota forem compreendidos a um nivel tao basico, poderao ser mais facilmente compreendidos em organismos mais complexos, como o ser humano.
Quanto a ciencia nao ocupar lugar, ocupa sim, e eh bastante espacoso... Acho piada as criticas que ouco ao "saber por saber". Eh uma caracteristica humana, fazer perguntas, e tentar responder-lhes, ainda que todos achem que eh desinteressante e completamente inutil. Aposto que os paizinhos do Galileu (nao me querendo comparar, cof cof) nao achavam piada ao facto de ele passar tanto tempo a olhar para o ceu, mas algo de importante nasceu da curiosidade dele. Quanto mais nao seja, um maior entendimento do mundo que nos rodeia... Eu acho isso importante, voces nao? Acima de tudo, a utilidade da ciencia "pura" eh satisfazer pessoas que nao gostam de deixar de ter perguntas. Confesso que se chegasse um dia a uma conclusao final e definitiva sobre evolucao social, tipo a = b + c, ficava tremendamente desapontada. Ha espaco para todos, felizmente, para os que gostam de ver as suas perguntas finalmente respondidas e para os que olham cada ponto de interrogacao como a coisa mais excitante deste mundo. Nao me venham dizer, ah o dinheiro e tal, porque tudo quanto eh guito vai parar a investigacao medica e MAI NADA. A unica coisa que me faria ir para investigacao medica seria estudar parasitoses, porque mistura coevolucao, ehehe.
Porra, isto ja dava outro post... Olha, que se lixe, eh o meu blog, mesmo...
Satisfeita, oh diabinha?
Eu volto a dizer: ai. o que se aprende por aqui! :))
Beijinhos, sô tôra.
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