Busy lab work and Fly Eye with Mosaic Colors
By Raymond on Apr 3, 2009 in Science and Research
Recently I am rather busy in lab work and coursework. An advantage of using fruit flies as model organism in biology is that a lot of genetic tools are available. These tools make flies, which also have short living cycle, a good species to screen for genes involved in certain molecular pathways. However, the drawback is that the screening tasks are quite tedious and repetitious. I feel that it is rather hard to find the feelings of being a scientist when I do such experiments, because the process is a bit passive and the result requires some luck. I hope that I will be able to initiate research projects which demand more active thinking when I become a graduate student.
At the mean time, I should still try best as this is my very first formal research project in college.
(a few trays full of fly vials)
Anyway, we sometimes may discover something interesting during repetitious work. After screening for over ten thousand flies, I accidentally found out one fly that had an eye with mosaic colors of red and orange. (According to genetics, it should be pure red originally)
(the fly has a red left eye and a orange right eye)
Post a Comment