Category: Sugary tales

Odds and sods, Poetry, Sugary tales

The dirigibility of thought

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Two yeasts met in the woods and one of them took the road less traveled by and it made all the difference.
The roads are the divergence point in the phylogenetic tree ca. 200 Mya ago.
(Robert Frost’s original poem is some what different)
But what is beyond ?
Is it possible to have an immortal yeast, just like a HeLA cell ?
What happens to mitochondria in industrial yeast strains ?
If yeasts are perennially fermenting in open industrial vats, is it not expensive for the cells to invest energy in genes that it may never use ?

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Sugary tales

PE-2 and CEN.PK meeting 9: Outuno

Gosh it has indeed been a long time. Yes it is. Yes it is. So comment Petruska and Seine meet after their long break.

Gruyere cheese stacked, Gruyere, Switzerland.
Gruyere cheese stacked,
Gruyere, Switzerland.

They

share their

hobbies and their

passion over a cup of

earl grey tea at Caracoli,

a cafe located in Alresford,

a village with maximum number of millionaires.

Such hedonists they were, they decide to go out for a drink to taste what they have produced through hard work.

Was it hard they surmise ?

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Sugary tales

PE-2 and CEN.PK meeting 8: Spring

Petruska and Seine see each other after a long summer vacation. Spring is in the air and they remember this beautiful song by Nina Simone titled ‘Another Spring‘ the sugarcane cutters were listening to in the North. Our heart melts listening to the mellifluous voice of Nina. Petruska asked Seine to watch this video of the sugarcane cutters who form alphabets in English, by twisting, bending and curling the intractable cane,

IMG_0807

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Sugary tales

PE-2 and CEN.PK meet (No.7) and earnestly salute women

Though CEN.PK and PE-2 also have two different mating types, they decide not to discuss about gender, as they feel it is a strange belief introduced by the humans. Today being the international women’s day, they decide to come together and give an earnest salute to all the women on the planet who are alive now and also for all those unsung heroines, who had given their lives, hearts and souls, for their families. Continue reading “PE-2 and CEN.PK meet (No.7) and earnestly salute women”

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Sugary tales

PE-2 and CEN.PK meeting 6: the lost art of writing

PE-2 writes a letter to CEN.PK as CEN.PK could not bear the heat of Brazil. It decided to hibernate in the labs of Peter Kotter or undergo another evolution experiment at Nielsen’s lab in Chalmers. Though the bond between Seine and Petruska is purely of platonic nature, PE-2 misses Seine. It decides to write by jotting down the thoughts in its DNA as the Swiss scientists recently shown that information stored in DNA can survive for eons. Continue reading “PE-2 and CEN.PK meeting 6: the lost art of writing”

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Sugary tales

PE-2 and CEN.PK meeting 5: Abhor

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CEN.PK: Hi Petruska, did you hear what happened in Copenhagen ? Something terribly deplorable has taken place in Osterbro, where Vijay lived for two years from 2003 to 2005.

PE-2: I am really sorry to hear that Seine. I remember Vijay could not sleep well last week, as the question of identity was bothering him the whole night. I took a peek at his thought system and all I could find was this one recurring thought:

‘Why do human beings strongly associate with something and would go to any extent to nourish it’ ?

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Sugary tales

PE-2 and CEN.PK meeting 4: Observations

CEN.PK and PE-2 had a lull period last week. They learn that Vijay is waiting for the nitrogen cylinder with 99.999% purity. Vijay needs the nitrogen gas to maintain anaerobicity in the culture medium. It costs 450 Reais for 10 m^3 of gas.

IMG_2336(North Devon, England)

PE-2: Seine, I have so many observations and questions to share and I wonder if one generation time is sufficient to share them all with you.

Generation time is the time taken for the mother cell to become a daughter cell.  It is equal to 0.693/mu, where mu is the growth rate of the organism under the given conditions. Growth rates made easy !

Petruska contines to speak…

When we, I mean our hexose transporters, transport  glucose, do we act cooperatively like the human beings ?  Do we have friends ? Would we want friends ? Continue reading “PE-2 and CEN.PK meeting 4: Observations”

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Odds and sods, Sugary tales

PE-2 and CEN.PK meeting 2 – Evolve

(Building 223, DTU, Denmark, where CEN.PK was when Vijay did his PhD). PE-2 and CEN.PK exchange pleasantries and share how their weekends were spent. PE-2 said that it has been super busy catching up the recent developments in the field of synthetic biology and artificial life as it is worried that mankind may eventually create synthetic life. To worry is a human trait but somehow … Continue reading PE-2 and CEN.PK meeting 2 – Evolve

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