I’m going to use a short poem to introduce some biology to those unfamiliar. Specifically, why liquid nitrogen is crucial to my work. The key words, are nestled in bold and will be expanded in as few lines as possible after the poem. Enjoy.
If thoughts were analogous to gene expression, and slavers were doing research on the thoughts of African communities in their natural habitat when it was not a crime to isolate African people from their homeland and establish plantation grown cultures, the slavers would have needed to flash freeze their prisoners in liquid nitrogen quickly upon capture.
Their prisoner’s thoughts would have changed over the voyage to the Americas to reflect their new life, not their old ways of living.
• Gene expression: The central dogma of molecular biology: DNA -> RNA -> Protein
The DNA locked within every cell’s nucleus* contains thousands of recipes for making the many proteins that carry out daily physiological functions. The catalogue of all of an organism’s ‘recipes’ called genes (about 3000 in humans) is called the genome, and represents an organisms highest potential -its functional repertoire. Genes encrypted in the DNA form are inactive, so to speak, until they are expressed (transcription) as a unit of RNA.
The Three key points::
1. Here, mRNA = gene expression
2. Gene expression (DNA -> mRNA) is not a whimsical process; it’s a huge investment of resources and energy by the cell. That means that only genes required for survival in the present circumstances get expressed (DNA -> mRNA).
2. DNA is stable and secure, but mRNA is unstable and gets degraded quickly, like a self destructing message that destroys itself once it’s been read. (Think Inspector Gadget)
The bottom line is that if you were to crack open a cell at any given moment and take an inventory of all of the mRNA, you would be able to understand the cells current physiological priorities in that moment.
• Liquid Nitrogen and the importance of Flash Freezing: Gene expression is instantaneous and the landscape of total mRNA floating around in a cell and the genes that the cell is deciding to express as mRNA changes from moment to moment. The microbes I capture are flash frozen in liquid nitrogen as soon as they are removed from their natural environment for two reasons: To stop the cell from expressing new genes associated with the stress of being removed from their home conditions, and to stop those genes already expressed as mRNA while living in their home environment from being degraded.
I use liquid nitrogen for this because it is below -200˚ C (~-346˚ F). Like the T1000 (T2 judgement day), samples freeze upon contact.
• To Isolate & Culture: To remove something from the wild (isolate), and grow it in laboratory conditions (culture).
When I lived in the SF Bay Area, I used to love going to the coast of the bay. I was also infatuated with plants around that same time because of my first intro to biology course; ferns were particularly fascinating. Anyway, I would go all the way to Sutro Cliffs in San Francisco Bay to steal individual ferns and succulents (isolate) that grew along the cliffside to attempt to grow them in a completely different environment at my house in Vallejo.
I’m keeping this tradition as a marine ecologist studying phytoplankton, the microscopic plants of the sea, I isolate individual cells with the assistance of a microscope and pipette. I then try to grow them in captivity by concocting special media (liquid soil) that is meant to provide just enough (not too much!) nourishment for them to survive and proliferate in controlled conditions. If they grow, I will have started a culture which will be used for downstream physiology experiments and other work.
However, in the social sciences ‘culture’ also refers to the customs of a group of humans, and has been hypothesized to serve as a coping mechanism or adaptation to circumstances (the environment). The historical significance of the Baptist church in black communities, particularly in the southern states of America comes to mind.
• What is Life and what does it mean to be living?
A spore that is lying dormant with the potential to germinate into a diatom; an active virus searching for a host; the untreated mentally handicapped homeless person that exists in its own filth wandering aimlessly at the bottom of any society — which is living, which is alive, and which is neither? Are YOU alive if you are unfree to chose your own destiny or are not using your potential?
What is life and what does it mean to be living?
Just food for thought. As always…
