March 30th Journal Club and Enchiladas

We had a great journal club today. We were looking at a 1991 Nature paper on Wolbachia infection and its spread in California (Turelli and Hoffman, 1991. Rapid Spread of an Inherited Incompatibility Factor in California Drosophila. Nature 353: 440-442.)

Here is the "skinny"
1. The math experts are still questioning Equation 1- more to come- they are investigating earlier reports to verify some of the assumptions about the equilibrium in equation 1.

2. We had some discussion about the effect of "F"(fecundity) on the "wave" of transmission. I would have to say that the "biological/English" explanations helped sort out the math explanation... the lesson is that we all have to mind our p's and q's and read carefully to track the impact of changes (up or down) on parameters of the equations. See enchilada-marked example above (first image)

3. As Wolbachia seems to adversely impact fecundity in infected females, we can probably put this is in the "+/-" column entry into ecological species interactions- i.e. a parasitism. See whiteboard above (second image)

4. We had enchiladas from Chilitos. They were definitely unique- and definitely spicy! Here are some comments:
"spicy"
"cheesy"
"yummy chunks of green chile" (see photos- there were definitely large pieces of green chile!)
"a nose runner"

The overall score was a 3.75 (on a 1-5 scale, with 5 being the highest). The spicy was definitely a selling factor for the NM students- perhaps not so much for the Canadian faculty! (see images 3 and 4)

Stay tuned for more updates on equations/models for Wolbachia spread in Drosophila populations!

March 2nd Journal Club & Enchiladas

We had our latest journal club on March 2nd. We used the following article as a starting point for our continuing discussion of Gene Regulatory Networks:

Ben-Tabou de-Leon, S. and E. Davidson. 2006. Deciphering the Underlying Mechanism of Specification and Differntiation: The Sea Urchin Gene Regulatory Network. Sci. STKE (361). pe47.

Our discussion quickly delved into math-thinking about how we can figure out how many combinations there are of a certain number of "objects" (in this case, gene circuits or loops). How did we end up with equations involving factorials? Well, Dr. Boecklen was thinking about modeling experiments for small gene circuits and loops, and before you know it, we were deep into math! (see our whiteboard)

As it was a journal club meeting, we also enjoyed enchiladas! This time we had green chicken enchilada's from Andele's. They were really good. The average "fruit fly" score was 4.1 (on a 1-5 scale, with 5 being the highest score). Here are some of the comments:

• "creamy and delicious"
• "I really liked the crispy bites of chicken"
• "good spicy flavor" (or "good spicy flavour"- can't remember if this one came from one of the two Canadians in the group!)

As we are assessing student learning with a pre- and post-test, we figured we should use a similar (if more qualitative) approach to assessing enchiladas- so here is a "pre" photo and a "post" photo- as you can see, the twelve of use made short work of a LARGE tray of enchiladas.