Tumor necrosis factor-alpha

Went to Prof Swami's lab with just 4 hours of sleep. Hear him blah blah blah for 20 minutes explaining to me what is my project. Of all.. I only remember TNFa, Tumor necrosis factor-alpha, an anti-tumoral protein. Looks "chim" at first... kinda scared when he tells me everything about the project and the protein.

But things changed when he showed me 7 copies of DNA analysis of cancer patient, of which 6 are children.

Immediately I stopped him and asked "Children ?" He replied solemnly, "Yes, children."

I was stunned... and there's immediately a fire burning in my heart telling me "YES YOU CAN AND YOU MUST DO IT !!!"

GO GO GO !!

p/s : It feels great to be given the chance to save children's lives even though the ambition of being a paediatric fails.

X-ray Crystallography ...

Seriously .. I kinda wonder why I choose this topic for my UROPS (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Programme in Science). This topic sounds pretty fun when you think about it. For a life science students, a chance to use instruments that you will never have the chance to even touch it. It's really an honour.

But .. sadly the difficulty of the theories kinda demoralises me. Reading through all the books that I've managed to find through the NUS Library Portal, I'm happy that NUS stocks a huge collection of books on proteins and X-ray crystallography. They even have an electronic copy of it ! Love it..

Was talking to another senior, Stephen about UROPS and apparently as a life science student we really must be ready to face the unprepared. He's working on a couple of phenotypes on C.elegans worms and apparently after 10 months his works doesn't show up any nice progress. Only in the last few weeks that those worms start showing some essential signs...

This kind of experimental disaster is what worries me most. To perform X-ray crystallography, you would need to purify a protein up to a purity beyond the expectancy of even the most well trained biochemist. To biochemist, it's good enough that if you can get a protein solution that can show some significant enzymatic activities. BUT .. for a crystallographer, it's a different kind of game.

For every 100g of protein that you purified, 1mg is used to grow the protein crystal. Of the 1mg, only 1 microgram will become a crystal. Of 100 crystal that you managed to grow, only 5 to 10 shows acceptable electron density map after being bombarded with X-ray.

Looks tedious. Yes. It is. In fact, it should. After all, how many light bulbs has Thomas Edison build to come up with one that can last 1200 hours ? How many kilogrammes of pitchblende has Madame Curie purified that ultimately lead to her death, in search of radioactivity mechanism ? Science exploration is always a test of endurance, motivation and determination.

Catechin - Ultimate Antioxidant , Possible cure for cancer

Well... One of my greatest ambition ( you can say the most 伟大 one )is to get involved in research regarding cancer tumors and it's prevention or cure.

Well... among the substances that caught my attention is Epigallocatechin Gallate.



Strictly saying , I cannot interpret the chemical structural formula and tell you their functions ( i know biotechnologist can , so i'll leave it to Samuel to deal with it :) )

However , according to wikipedia , this dude here can neutralize cancerous cells and stop them from dividing further to form new cancer cells !

Amazingly , you can add some adequate amount of catechins into your diet by having 3 to 5 cups of Japanese Green Tea a day ..

Ya Ya ... I know all of you says " Hey I'm still bloody hell young, why should I care ?"

Sad to say to you ... Those who are most prone to cancer are those who says these words when they are in your age. *woops!!*

So dude , if you have no Green Tea at home , oolong tea or English teas makes good substitution. Happy cancer fighting :)

Finally .. The essay is finished !!!

Nanotechnology huh ? Mahai ... such a good topic ...

Anyway .. Pray to god that Mr.K won't give a shit about my penmanship ... i write terrible writings , duh !

Tommolo breakfast will be potato wedges, just bought a frozen packet from Giant XD

Anyway , i would like to warn everyone to check your rice container now !

Do you know that in Sungai Petani , where there's 3 big gigantic hyperstore , we are having rice shortage !!!!

Ya ... so damn diu , Giant is almost empty now ! Only 30 packs of 10 kg rice left !

Econsave got about 25 packs ... i believe they shud be empty by the time i write this blog ..

God Bless Us .. My dad and I so scare no rice eat so we bought 20 kg of rice - enough for more than 3 months d :)

I'm a big rice maniac , duh ~~


Anyway , i wanna clap clap to crowking for his 100th post too !

*Clap!*
*Clap!*
*Clap!*
*Clap!*

crowking ar... i wanna post you Kaede Matsuhima or Riko Tachibana's picture de , but doing so will make me got banned from ads ... LOL ~

So i guess it's better not to treat your pervertness for my pocketness's sake :P

Parasitic toungue...

Look at this dead fish...

At its tongue..

This is a special parasitic-hosts relationship ..

The parasite attach to the fish first..

Then it sucks on the fish's tongue's blood...

Soon, the tongue lost all the nutrition and eventually dies out...

But the parasite continues to grow..

Finally... the parasite mimic the fish's tongue..

It attaches itself to the mouth muscle and the fish can control it as a tongue. !!!

Amazing !!

14/07/07 - Stem cells for breast reconstruction .. !! WTF ?!

I just came back from mountain hiking and I went to Scientific American to read about some scientific stuff..

LOL ~ One damn article attracted my attention ..

Stem Cells Therapy Killer Application :
Breast Augmentation !!

WTFish ?!

Using fat from the patient's own body to rebuild other areas is not a novel idea, but such reconstructions often fail as the fat is simply reabsorbed.

However using fat-derived stem cells appears to overcome this problem, according to the company behind the procedure, Cytori Therapeutics.

LOL ~ This time.. The world is going to tumble again ..

I can only see one thing good about this new tech : breast cancer survivors get to have a pair of new breast ... I mean real one.. Not silicon.. nor plastics..

Hope the company's initial intention is to help them.. Not to trick some young woman who wants to expand from A to C ..