Regular Lobsters Start Out As Just Little Lobsters But Spiny Lobsters Start Out As These Beautiful Weird

Babesia

it would be so cool if you did e. coli in a jason mask (my friend brought this up. doesn’t have to be e. coli tho :P)

or if you did a microbe with the markiplier pink mustache :DDDDD

I've definitely done E. coli before, but I'll absolutely take the hat suggestions! I'm always in need of those.

pssssst...

guess what.

you deserve to be happy.

pass it on.

Some of you may be familiar with model organisms in biology but even so, you may think about mice, rabbits or flies rather than ctenophores. The whole purpose of having a model organism is to be able to understand particular biological functions/processes by using an organism that can be maintained easily, has a relatively short generation time and has its genome sequenced (this allows us to really understand their genetic makeup). Since this species of ctenophore (Mnemiopsis leidyi) has had its genome sequenced it allows us to identify key genes/proteins and try to determine their function.

The work I am currently doing for my project is focused on understanding the origin of the nervous system.

There's been a long standing debate amongst scientists over which species of animal first diverged from all other metazoans whether it be sponges or ctenophores. For a long time it has been thought that sponges are the sister group to all metazoans, although more recently studies have suggested that ctenophores are. Sponges are really simple animals that lack nervous systems, whereas ctenophores are more complex and have a nervous system. If ctenophores are then in fact found to be the sister group to all other metazoans, it poses the questions about whether the complex structures such as neurons and synapses evolved once or multiple times independently?

If you check you can see a diagram showing what I mean by the "sister group" to all metazoans. The first pic identifies sponges as the sister group, but with more analysis on a molecular basis, the 3rd pic could be possible.

Since most of the studies on neurons and nervous systems more generally are focused on metazoans, the work at this lab uses ctenophores to understand more about their complex biology with the aim of understanding the origins of neurons.

for real though imagine being one of the first botanists to study fern and lycophyte sex and you put the sex water (the water in which they are having sex bc they love it soooooo much) under the microscope and theyre cranking out these damn Doohickies that swim like people sperm.... what is going On down there

Pleural fluid - cytospin slide stained with wrights stain - lung cancer

Church of Whale Fall

The many faces of reactive plasma cells - all found within the same chronic skin infection in a dog!

Plasma cells are activated B lymphocytes and their purpose is to secrete immunoglobulin. When they become reactive, or stimulated, they can be binucleated, multinucleated, and have a variety of morphological changes occur including the formation of Russell bodies. Russell bodies are round to globular intracellular aggregates of immunoglobulin; their formation is due to an imbalance between the rates of synthesis, folding, secretion, and degradation of immunoglobulins.

While most Russell bodies are rounded, one (of many) phenotype of Russell bodies can present as crystalline bodies. Immunoglobulin crystals are very uncommon to see in plasma cell proliferations, and very few reports have been authored on them in veterinary medicine. I feel very lucky to have found three different types of crystalline bodies as you can hopefully appreciate in the above pictures!

Life has been busy and stressful and very very strange but at least pathology can always be depended on - please enjoy this weird and invasive mammary carcinoma from a dog.