Wasps can also play hard-to-get

Today, I did some gel electrophoresis, polymerase chain reaction using a new series of DNA samples, wasp mating, and whitefly crushing. So apparently, I'm too tall for most of the equipment we've got down at the Hunter lab, and I need to do my work from a sitting position, which still requires some bending over. Do people over 5'6'' just stay away from science? Anyway, gel electrophoresis from a sitting position is still really easy, but fairly hazardous, since the stain we're using on the DNA is possibly mutagenic. Also, everybody at the lab is fairly superstitious and paranoid, so I'm among friends. Oh yeah, I'm the youngest one there, but everyone has so much respect for each other that it didn't even register. Polymerase chain reaction is fairly wonderful. I can't remember if I really elaborated upon it in the last post, or if anybody read it, but basically, it involves mixing up ingredients and then heating them up. That process creates more DNA from what was inserted. The enzyme that replicates the DNA, called the Taq polymerase, costs like $100 per small tube, and is from a Eubacteria, which is crazy because Archaea are supposed to be the extremophiles.

I'll grudgingly start a new paragraph for this one, since it's so cool. I forced the wasps I isolated last week after school to mate with each other. Of course, that wasn't only to appeal to my god complex. It is important to get the wasps to mate in order to determine their preference for one another (we think that infection status may affect their desire to mate with each other, although they are pretty uninterested in mating to begin with...). The most fun I had today was with uninfected whitefly larvae. Fueled by Red Bull, I practiced picking them off of leaves to reduce crowding. Of course, they've got to die, so the concern here is doing it gracefully. Under the microscope, I had to take a forceps and gently remove the parasite without ripping the thin, thin leaf. Apparently, energy drinks help with this.

Alright, I'm done. I think that all of my posts will have the word "wasp(s)" in them, like some sitcom titles often have a theme. Now maybe I'll read some other posts...