= Such Stupid Things =

As a pseudo-biologist, I maintain live cell cultures in lab for various research purposes. On any given day I tend to petri dishes full of cells ultimately derived from humans and fruit flies, as well as the bacteria E. coli, (which is mostly harmless, despite its bad PR).

It's in everyone's best interest to keep these three cell types far away from each other, but I discoverd this morning that, despite my best efforts, some wiley bacteria snuck their way into both my human and insect cells. This is bad news. Higher organisms produce some pretty elegant cellular machinery, and HEK-293s are the cadillac of eukaryotic cell culture, but when you take these guys away from their precious immune systems they don't have many ways to protect themselves. So over the weekend, while I obliviously dicked around my apartment, my most important cells were being slowly eaten by single-celled maurauders. With the death toll well into the millions, this tragedy will not be soon forgotten. Especially since I can't really do any research with dead cells. I guess my winter vacation will be starting a couple weeks early.