daisy

Well, Yew contains Taxol.....a potential anti-carcinogen postulated to be useful in the fight against breast cancer, foxglove contains digitalis which is a heart stimulant, coca is the source of cocaine (a potential painkiller....in the right hands!!!!) Let me add some others...comfrey, a herb used to heal wounds/bones, willow bark (aspirin, a pain killer)....everything is a poison if overused. That's the take home message.

Wouldn't this apply to beef too? I would have thought so. The slaughter man's statement still doesn't explain the physiological facts....cells that are alive (be they pig, cow or chicken) will maintain osmotic homeostasis....dead cells won't and will be subject to passive diffusion and osmotic gradients. Those gradients will be the same for any land vertebrate I think...unless you know different.

And YT, when you say you did mention alternatives in post 9....you can't really mean that can you?...that folk on death row should have their torment added to by being guinea pigs? I'm as right wing as the next person but that's stretching it a bit. I would exterminate a paedophile/murderer or thoroughly evil person as willingly as you but I would not want to extend the punishment of death by forcing them to take part in experiments....that would make us as bad as them. Don't you see that? Shades of Hitler here.

I'm still waiting for someone to come up wiith a better model system than a living mammal for drug responses. And those of you who suggest death row inmates....all well and good but then you'd have the civil liberties brigade on your back....not to mention the rather large proportion of death row inmates who claim to be innocent (innocent until proven guilty....isn't that the dogma of the free world). So if the justice system is correct you'de be expecting a bunch of innocent-until-proven guilty people to test your drugs for you. Neat. Then you don't have to bother finding other alternatives eh?

Happy Birthday Dave ...what's left of it!

Would Gilbert's Development be any good? Or an anatomical textbook...such as Gray's I really don't know....if you had any way of approaching an orthopeadic/thoracic surgeon they might be able to suggest a textbook?

I don't know ANY researchers who have a gung-ho attitude to testing anything on animals (whether it's responses to drugs or neurological response to stimuli) and I have worked alongside many of these people in the past. What I will say is this....those of you out there who say "there's all sorts of other models we can use other than animals" please tell us what they are??? Are you talking about tissue culture....because if so, you are never going to recreate the situation that exists in a real living organ, such as cell-to cell-communication between different cell types. Not unless you have somehow managed to create an incredibly complex co-culture of cells such as that which exists in the brain. And in addition, those of you who are dead set against animal testing are obviously not undergoing ANY medical treatment EVER. Because just about any treatment you can think of (even surgical) has been tested on animals. So the anti-vivisectionists/anti-animal testing lobby, think about this....there is no modern medical treatment that hasn't been tested on an animal at some stage (even if it was hundreds of years ago) so if you are totally serious in your beliefs, you better not benefit from any of it. And another thing (just by the way) for those of you who think cell culture/tissue culture is the way forward....where do you think the cells and tissue come from....sacrificed animals usually.

I kind of think it has to be something to do with the curing process YT. Physiologically, cells are kept osmotically stable with high K+ low Na+ (relative to extracellular fluid) and equimolar Cl-. Any disruption of the homeostatic equilibrium in living cells would destroy them. Therefore, salty meat (i.e high NaCl) is presumably due to the curing medium used in the meat processing procedure. Dead meat (i.e. dead cells) cannot maintain osmotic potential/homeostasis. So, if you use a high concentration of salt to cure meat, then the cells will take up salt by passive diffusion. I can't explain why bacon and gammon would be saltier but I bet it's something to do with the preservation process.

the moral of the story is......revise consistently throughout the year....I talk from experience here, boring as it seems Then you can have fun AND pass exams. Little and often....blah blah blah....god do I sound boring ! Anyway, who mentioned Hell's Kitchen....I totally love Gordon Ramsay (all great chef's are bad tempered...again I talk form experience having worked in restaurants in my yoof)...he is totally fanciable. I sometimes wonder where all the real men went, nowadays we seem to have girlie-boys and "new men" as celebrities. This would freak out your average feminist but I like men to be men (like my husband, Dad and brothers) and Gordon Ramsay fits the bill!! Sorry, seem to have gone off on a tangent there

Well, I don't accept that Jane Goodall or any of her group would be accepted as clan members by the chimps..I reckon the chimps became habituated to human neighbours but it still impacted on their natural behaviour. So how would you prove that a human had been accepted as a clan member by a chimp group then admiral_ju00? And that human presence wasn't affecting natural behaviour? It's pretty much accepted wisdom amongst the behavioural biologists I know that any form of human intervention or contact with the study animal should be kept to a complete minimum or avoided otherwise the data is invalid. This is surely self-evident.

43/f/Scotland......and I'm one of the venerable old folk...though many amongst you wouldn't agree...especially Fafalone...heh!

So....what happened to the chat!!!....is it me???!!! Am I mad/stupid/terminally dim-witted??? Give me a break guys!....and here's an idea....when you have a problem why not send out a mass e-mail to tell us all? Is that a hard thing...like rocket science? Or am I just too hard to please? Go on...have a go at me...I can take it!!

Not sure I understand what you mean by preparative and analytical? and what are you precipitating, DNA, RNA, protein? I sense you are seeking the answer to exam questions here...perhaps you need to do the reading? I'm sure you've been given the clues in your lecture notes, do the work...like I did.

When I'm freezing down cells I use either glycerol or DMSO (Dimethylsulphoxide) to prevent ice crystal formation....hope that helps.

Well, enzymes ARE proteins!!! After you determine a standard curve using Bradford or Lowry assays, you do a Western Blot; where you separate your proteins on a gel, transfer the proteins to a membrane which you then incubate with an antibody directed against your protein of interest. If you run a loading control of known concentration to check that you've loaded the same amount of protein per well, you can quantify your protein of interest. This of course is a hugely condensed version but look up Sambrook and Maniatis, the Bible, and it will guide you through it. I can send you more detailed instructions if you want via e-mail.

Aman, as far as I understand it, (and I'm trawling my old memories here of lectures etc) most of us harbour the tubercular bacterium (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) but it never really impacts on us till we are immuno-compromised . I THINK (and I'm not a medic...just a PhD...so please don't take this as gospel) that since your wife was injured and unwell the TB bacteria probably had a chance to get a grip on her. Here in the UK (or at least in Scotland) we are vaccinated against TB routinely because there was a big problem in the 1950's in overcrowded city areas. My Dad lost a sister to TB in the late 1940's because she got ill with pleurisy, was run down, and it developed into TB. Because my grandparents wanted to nurse her at home (not realising the dangers) my Dad caught it and so did his other sister. They both survived but only because Streptomycin became available. To answer your original question it may well be that the accident triggered the illness but as I say, I'm not a medic...only a PhD. However, my very best wishes to your wife for a speedy recovery.

OK....a comedy death would be good......the Brits among us must remember Rod Hull falling off his roof (Rod Hull and Emu) but hey...any guy who did a TV show involving a pink windmill must surely have deserved a ludicrous death. Anyway, I'd like to either die with me boots on (i.e. in action as a frightening old bag) or in my sleep....and I've told both my kids I'd like a humanist funeral where "Wild Thing" by the Trogs is played and people tell funny stories about me. I don't really care how I die as long as it isn't protracted and/or painful. Perhaps I should just go out with a bang???

admiral ju00 you say Jane Goodall.....but she interfered with the chimps...that's now accepted...by giving them food rewards to entice them into the camp area in the very early days of her study. This surely impacted on their behaviour through the generations. They came, they ate the bananas provided by the research group, and this fact ALONE must surely mean that subsequent data was skewed. The chimps hung around the area because of the food reward and their contact with humans must then surely have impacted on their natural impulses and behaviour. Primates such as chimps and gorillas change their behaviour around when in close contact with humans surely? When studying animals one must NEVER interact in any way or even let them be aware of your presence....otherwise your data is useless. Anyway, to get back to the question....I've never MET any big league scientists but I've heard Richard Dawkins lecture (neo-Darwinism), and Stanley Prusiner (prions), and Ron Laskey (cell cycle), and David Lane (p53), and I've been truly awed and inspired.

It's a chihuahua...how dangerous could it be. The dog is more delicate than a kid probably (I'm a mum and I know how rough toddlers can be even though my kids are teenagers now) and I do know that chihuahaus and papillons are very delicate breeds particularly regarding injury. On a purely personal note I regard anything that small as a "rat on a string" as we say here in Scotland. If you're going to have a dog get a real one I say......this is purely my own opinion....I just hate stupid tiny dogs. Feel free to have a pop at me.

I have had the most horrible virus/trojan/worm type probs on my PC so I'm using my lap-top for now. And when I logged in here, and tried to access the chat room, it wouldn't let me!! So can I just say "Hi guys" and I've missed chatting...let's hope I get it sorted someday soon.

Anything with either Carey Grant or Bette Davis. For example Philadelphia Story, All About Eve, Arsenic and Old Lace, Now Voyager...blah blah blah. Question: what personal attribute do you least like about yourself...mine would be my temper.

For cystic fibrosis patients Pseudomonas aeruginosa causes problems...I think they have problems with it because of their condition whereas we just live with it.

I would suggest you read anything by Stephen Gould (sadly extinct) who if memory serves wrote "This Wonderful Life"?? But certainly DID write some very accessible evolutionary biology books (he and Dawkins had rather opposing views if I'm not mistaken but both were/are very eminent evolutionists). You can get into the whole neo-darwinism/classical darwinism thing but it's not my field really so I suggest you read Dawkins (who I once heard speak and on a purely personal level didn't like...my opinion only) and Gould. There's all sorts of stuff about "punctuated equilibrium" that I can't remember...lol. Good luck!

Everyone looks so nice Maybe I'll root out an ancient photo of me when I was young and pretend that's what I look like now

OK...LOL.....this stupid thing won't let me connect in the chat room. I might have known! AND!! I can't do the IRC thing either Never mind.....I should probably be doing housework or something anyway