Good morning all. Rather than talking about the possibility of a government shutdown or politics at all, I’ll be spending my time this morning talking about something that makes sense to me, Science. I saw this the other day and it made me smile. You see, some people are optimists, some people are pessimists, and then some people are scientists:

Since I am studying Microbiology right now and irritating the crap out of everyone with my constant mumblings about bacteria being everywhere, and since I am growing more and more intimate with the word peptidoglycan as the semester progresses, I found this next item to be quite brilliant. Before sharing the link with you, I feel that it is very important for you to know what peptidoglycan is. It will give you an insight into what may otherwise be nerdy Science ramblings with excessive profanity.

Peptidoglycan is the structural molecule that makes up bacterial cell walls. It is largely composed of a complex arrangement of carbohydrates and proteins. In Gram-positive bacteria, the cell wall is made up of a thick net of peptidoglycan thus trapping the violet/iodine stain of the Gram staining process. In Gram-negative bacteria, the cell wall is made up a thin layer of peptidoglycan sandwiched between two phospholipid bilayers. Since the Gram-negative cell’s peptidoglycan layer is much thinner than the Gram-positive cell’s, the molecularly small violet/iodine stain is not retained and the cell must be stained again using a counterstain that has much larger molecules, such as safranin.

And just for further reference sake, bacteria are single celled organisms with no clearly-defined nucleus or organelles, they have a cell wall, and are referred to as Prokaryotes. We are not Prokaryotes. We are multicellular, have clearly defined nuclei and organelles, and no cell wall. We are Eukaryotes.

Now, having said all that, do enjoy reading this fun, incredibly-not-work-safe “essay” on what Pencillin does to certain bacteria. (Oh, and for the record, I almost just lost the entire post just now by accidentally closing the tab that I am working in. Thank goodness for the preview window staying open!) Anyways, you’ll have to manually open this link in a new tab (right click, open link in new tab) due to the fancy flash photo thingamajig that automatically opens photos as a flashy pop up thing. Enjoy: Critters!

Well, Little Miss Cotton just called and I have to run and save some scooter-ers. Before I go, check out these photos that Dr. Hank took of us Letterpressers the other day. Have a wonderful Saturday. More soon. ~SC