angiogenesis and omelettes

How many eggs do you prepare at one time? We did 30 on Monday.


These weren't to eat, however. They were fertilized eggs we bought from the Ag unit over at State and we got them for a CAM (chorioallantoic membrane) assay to test some peptides for angiogenesis properties.

Only a bit over half were actually fertilize so some rooster is apparently falling down on the job. Bad rooster! But the 17 that are fertile will be used to further the reach of medical knowledge. Just warms your heart, huh?

The photo above was the eggs in an incubator waiting for us to be ready to do the assay prep. Below are the eggs after deshelling (that's a serious scientifc procedure marked mainly by hitting the side of the egg against a hard object) and being placed into petri dishes. The assay takes 2 weeks to run and I'll be taking more pictures...

Comments

SassyAssy said…
I guess if you ever want a career change, Waffle House would be impressed with your egg cracking skills! The bonus? you get to make the hashbrowns raw like you love them.
12:44 PM
Unknown said…
Do you get to take the non-fertile eggs home to practice your "deshelling" technique?
12:52 PM
utenzi said…
Ewwww! There's just something about the idea of rooster sperm floating about that totally takes my appetite away. I might never eat another egg!
12:56 PM
Unknown said…
If you've had brown eggs before you might have eaten a few sperm cells. When I lived in Maine, that was all we could get - and we bought them from a farmer who kept roosters with the hens. Had to throw eggs out occasionally...
1:07 PM
Unknown said…
Well, I guess you have to say "research is research"! Take care, Utenzi!
5:01 PM
Pearl said…
Arrr, that be making a lot of rum egg nog laddie!
6:37 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nitroflex at home

Image
I mentioned a few days ago that I'd purchased off of Craig's List an exercise machine. A Nitroflex, to be more specific, for the grand sum of $75. The boxes you see to the left were bought by the seller as discontinued merchandise over a year ago and stored in his back yard storage shed. You might be able to see some of the bugs and such that had made their homes on these boxes. I left them out on my deck for a few days before opening them to allow the insects to leave gracefully or die in the sun. The picture to the left is the pieces from the box, unboxed, and up in one of my upstairs bedrooms. For the most part it wasn't difficult to move it around though two pieces were heavy and a number of them were kinda long and bulky to be wandering about the house with. Surprisingly, this kit didn't require any extra tools. There were two allen keys and one combo wrench included in the boxes and that was all it took to put it together. The whole thing only took about half an h...
Read more

ankle update

S ince a few people object to seeing my feet --poor misdirected souls--I have the two pictures below hidden behind links. Behold them at your own risk! *evil laugh* Actually they're not scary though the first one is a little colorful. T he first picture shows my ankle and foot from the side, as labeled. You can see a lot of general edema of the entire foot. There's also a good bit of discoloration of the ankle area and to a lesser degree the top of the foot all the way down to the toes. The side view is a lot worse in this regard than the top view. T he second picture shows the two feet from the top so you can compare the somewhat normal looking right foot to the injured left foot. There's not much abnormal color on this view but you can see the "sausage like" swelling of the left foot. It's this swelling that is causing my main problem--I can't get the foot into my boots and I need the boots to support the ankle. Damn Catch-22. Side view, looking inward ...
Read more

Ostrich poop found here

Image
I took these pictures last Fall while visiting the NC Zoo. On the left you can see what appears to be a nice polite ostrich just wandering around. This impression soon turns out to be false when her dowdy tail feathers raise up and reveal a puckered anus. Ewwww! If you look carefully, you can see that she's made a deposit on the ground. More ewwww! Feel free to click on the image to make them bigger. Details can make all the difference in these shots. In other matters, aren't those really bony legs they have? And couldn't they have a little more color?
Read more