We got a gorgeous calendar today that I want to share some photos with some of you here. My aunt is a bio-physicist for a research institute. Mostly she grows crystals which other people then draw. The drawings are in the calendar.
For those who want to get a better view, check out the photos (I scanned them so the resolution isn't as great as the printed copy. Sorry)
This is the front of the calendar: a family friend drew this years ago...
This is beautiful, but not a cause to celebrate. It is an enzyme related to breast cancer.
Yet another breast cancer-related enzyme (these are grown to help test new treatments). Beautiful, but deadly...
Space-grown insulin. This one would beat out any modern artist, wouldn't it?
Another no-reason-to-celebrate: this is an AIDS-related DHFR
These are wonderful! Thanks lupine
Wow Lupine, who would have thought microbes as deadly as some of these would be so pleasing to the eye?
Hidden beauty. Hmmm, that makes me wonder what the furry things I find in my referigerator would look like under a microscope. I keep telling my family they are science projects.
I work in a pathology lab and see such beautiful things under the scope. But it seems the more beautiful, the more deadly. Why is that? Believe me, you don't want beautiful and interesting cells. But I sure do appreciate seeing that someone has made them into a calendar. Here's my Christmas prayer for ya'll: May you have boring, boring, boring cells in your body!"
Amen, Stella. Here is a kind of boring enzyme that I hope everyone has:
Interesting note: this lab is in Buffalo, NY which is the goiter capital of the world -- no one knows (yet) why.
This message was edited Thursday, Dec 19th 2:03 PM
And now, one that I pray no one here has. This photo was unexpected: I hadn't realized the lab was working with prions. But these are what are thought to cause Mad Cow, Scapie, in other words, the brain-eating diseases...
Another gorgeous photo of a very deadly type of pathogen...
Whiterose, "Satan transforms himself into an angel of light and would deceive the elect, if that were possible" (paraphrased)
Yes, on the spiritual level that's so, but various insects and mammals are not satanic, they simply have deadly survival mechanisms and ways to stun prey for food...the same can be said for the life of the cell. There's so much that we don't understand about the actual dynamics of the life process, including the aspects of it depicted in these images. Ultimately, I trust God (some would say Light, or Consciousness, as attributes of the Divine) to overtake the darkness, and fill the spaces of our ignorance; in the meantime, we walk with mystery and in awe of forces we did not invent, and cannot defeat on our own.
