Hoi Squeamous

[J-dye]

Ooooo, spooky, that sounds like the last syllable of my name . You sure you're not just pished and seeing double?

That IS my name. Fecking Stalkers.

do you have a perfectly round bubble butt

[Chip Monk]

Yeah , it sounds it.

Who amongst us hasn't created a genetically modified mouse.

Are you now happy with what you do or do you see it as a stepping stone to other things. For example would you wish to work in the academic labs, or do you prefer the "fiddly" bits you are currently working on.

I'm not making a value judgement there, though I can see how it might sound as if I am. Just curious on how you see your career developing.

Well I'm kind of doing a bit of both. I've got co-authorship on a paper being submitted by one of the labs. We hear back in about 3 weeks if it's been accepted by the journal. That'll be my first .

Good luck with that, let us know how you get on.

[Squeamous]

Thanks CM, that's really kind of you.

[Mr JP Fugley]

Is it possible for you to explain to the hard of thinking what your paper is about. Just an overview like, not the paper itself. It's an area which is a totally closed book to me, most other people as well I should think.

[Squeamous]

It's not really my paper. The science behind it belongs to the lab, but the technical side is what I advised on. I'm surprised they gave me a co-authorship to be honest, but I have reasoned that if I hadn't been doing my job so well they would have got half as much info as they needed, and I did advise them with some specific things they didn't know how to do. Although to be honest I would have been happy with an acknowledgement.

Anyway, the paper is about a gene that among other things contributes to limb formation. It's present in mammals, amphibians, fish, even in animals without limbs where it's expressed in the region they would form if they had them (ie torso). The lab wanted to find out how it goes about helping limbs to form, all the various things that interact with it to do its job. I have to be a bit vague anyway because there's a competition issue and I don't want to get in trouble .

[Barbarossa]

Millipedes must be choc-a-bloc with that then, eh


/me doesn't really understand about genes

[Squeamous]

I don't think it's in insects .

[Barbarossa]

Are you trying to trick me?

millipedes aren't, you know, insects, innit

[Squeamous]

Oh yeah. What are they then? Can't say I've ever given much thought to the taxonomy of the millipede .

[Barbarossa]

They are classed as "diplopoda" of the subphylum "myriapoda" of the phylum "arthropoda" of the kingdom of "animalia".

"creepy crawlies" for short