The Dino-Aspie Ex-Café (for Those 40+... or feeling creaky)

Post Reply New Topic

Hi Lau. Nice to see you're still alive. Thanks, Gromit.

Last edited by Nan on 02 Aug 2009, 10:24 pm, edited 3 times in total.

When I first started as a medical technologist and worked briefly at a Children's Hospital, I remember how calloused I was. I could draw blood from one and a half pound babies, go into surgeries to collect blood, test for diseases, do starch gel electrophoresis for clotting abnormalities etc., and found it all fascinating. I studied how the clotting cascade was discovered (by finding someone whose blood wasn't clotting but who had all the factors that were presently known. When I graduated, 13 factors were known. How many are known now are not known by me) A great deal of our understanding of physiology and genetics happens because of people with variations. O Bombay for example was discovered in one family in Bombay.

Your daughter, Nan, may get a brand new disease named after her or the doctor.

As a young MT, that's cool. As a mother that's horrifying.

When my mother had me go in with my brother to hold his hand while his chin was being sewn up, I thought it was funny. When my son tore part of his ear off in a bicycle accident, I found myself gulping while the doctor sewed it back together with an audience of more doctors who wanted to watch his technique. When I looked away, I got to see the guy in the bed next to us in the ER who had shot off part of his knee. When my husband showed up to take my place, I ran away as fast as I could.

I don't know if I would make a good MT anymore. The objectivity you need to have is gone. I used to find genetic anomaly case studies fun to read. After having raised a child with autism plus, when I read the calm descriptions, I feel like weeping as I wonder how the family copes.

So Nan, I am conflicted here. I want to hear everything about the genetics and physiology you discover. And yet, that seems so very voyeuristic.

Please get some sleep. Let us know how the birds are doing. And know that you have the sympathy of a great many people.

The birds are well. HeaveCliff got put back in with the other birds and got beat up again, this time we suspect it was his mother as the feathers were plucked off his back, so he's now in the "Group W Bench" cage with the misfits. He has a mohawk from where the feathers are growing back on his head, and a naked pink back. He seems happy now, as the other birds adopted him right away.

Squab is big now, and hard to tell from his/her parents. We're going to have to band him/her soon.

Spike laid another egg yesterday, and is acting all pissy and whiney (yes, birds can do that, I'd never have thought it possible) and I expect another egg tonight. He's upset because I haven't come home and taken him out of his cage for a bath in his picklejar lid in two days.

And, thankfully, the heatwave has broken and it's 68F degrees out with a sea breeze, and quiet. The HOA clamped down on all the noise and it's like a different complex, now.

And with that, I'm going to bed.

Last edited by Nan on 02 Aug 2009, 10:25 pm, edited 3 times in total.

The 64 codons are used to produce just 20 amino acids, which are given, as shorthand, all the letters of the alphabet, bar for BJOUXZ. Quite why they didn't avoid the bases' U(T)CAG lettering is down to history, I guess.

If the mutation is not a point mutation (single nucleotide change), but a whole codon being modified, then "C > T" would read as "Cysteine > Threonine", which means "UGU or UGC > ACU, ACC, ACA or ACG", which would mean "U > A" in the first place plus "G > C" in the second, with a U or C staying unchanged in the third place.

I was dubious about the likelihood that two point mutations would just happen to occur beside one another. On a quick peruse, I didn't see that mentioned as a typical sort of thing to happen. However, a Google for "double point mutation" reveals that it is not such a wild idea.

Hello and goodnight to all!
Chuck

Last edited by Chuck on 03 Aug 2009, 3:11 am, edited 2 times in total.

We love you Chuck!

Trying to remember biochemistry. If this is a mutation in a tRNA, doesn't the effect depend very much on whether the mutation is in the bit that binds to the messenger RNA? There the consequence should be that this tRNA (sometimes) puts glutamic acid where a different amino acid should be. Whether it happens would depend on whether the correct tRNA happens to get there first or not. That would be a random process.

If the mutation is in one of the regions responsible for how the tRNA folds, then the shape would change. That might affect how it binds to the mRNA. More likely it affects how it binds to the amino acid it is supposed to carry. In the most extreme case, the tRNA might bind something else, perhaps not even an amino acid. I don't know whether that would stop protein production when that tRNA binds to the mRNA, or just slow it down by making the ribosome wait until the useless tRNA is gone again. the mutated tRNA might bind better to glutamic acid and not let it go. It might bind worse, slowing down protein production because the concentration of tRNAs with glutamic acid bound to them would be too low.

A mutation in a region that isn't producing a protein means the consequence does not have to be a an amino acid substitution in one protein.

It's been a while since I learned biochemistry, and I didn't go into depth. Check my reasoning with someone competent.

I luvs yas too, Lelia!

Last edited by Chuck on 03 Aug 2009, 3:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

Here is an introduction to the Mitomap in Nan's post above:
http://www.ianlogan.co.uk/discussion/intro2.htm

Last edited by Chuck on 03 Aug 2009, 3:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

When I took biology it was studying plant parts and frogs. The learning curve is extraordinarily steep here, so I do appreciate your assistance. Thank you.

Last edited by Nan on 02 Aug 2009, 10:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.

16000 Posts!! ! Woo!

Goodness, 16,000 posts?! !!
Congratulations Richie!

I'm a recluse baby....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC2ZwdSv ... re=related

Last edited by Chuck on 03 Aug 2009, 3:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

complete with misspellings, and cool riff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vcd95yxQxs

Last edited by Chuck on 03 Aug 2009, 3:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

Healthcare. Yep. Could stand some improvements. Richie ain't ca-razee below. Just had to kill my rant.

Last edited by Chuck on 03 Aug 2009, 3:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

I have been reading the dialog that Nan and Chuck have been posing about the health care system and from what Chuck is describing it sounds like a recipe for disaster.....