I haven't done one of these in a while. Last Thursday, Stephan and I "imaged" some macrophages being infected with a vicious strain of vibrio, here's a cool image of one of the poor suckers:
The macrophage is on the top right, a few vibrio cells can be seen on the lower left. Note that the macrophage has all these funky tubes coming out of it.
(Yet again tubes ... my thesis adviser's lab would refer to microtubules as "tubes" too. They're everywhere!)
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Macrophages are really good at gobbling stuff up. It's all right there in the name - they are big (macro) eaters (phage). I study them in the context of the immune system - one of the things they do really well is eat up bacteria and other pathogens that have found their way into your tissues.
Way back in high school bio, I learned about the 2 main ways that eukaryotic organisms (everything other than bacteria and archaea) make their metabolic living: photosynthesis and
Imagine that you are a bad guy running from the law, and the sheriff is about to catch up to you. If you want, you can be Butch Cassidy or the Sundance Kid or any other charismatic bad guy. Or maybe you're a wizard in Harry Potter and Dementors are about to catch up to you.
EVOLUTIONARY ADAPTATIONS: THE IMPACT OF LIGHTER SKIN:
It's the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Praise be the noodle,
Ramen. :o)
I guess our experiment was blessed by the presence of His noodled appendages.