Hello, my name is Drosophila melanogaster and i'm a fruit fly. i know i know. Quite a mouthful of name huh. It all happened one fateful day some time ago when a bunch of
So, on this day, i woke up to find myself unusually drowsy and tired. i looked around. Some of my friends are around. They looked kinda drowsy, like me. Some are still unconscious, lying at the floor.
Wait a sec.
Where is this place? i just realised that the surrounding looks strange and unfamiliar. It seems like we're in a big container of some sort. And the weird thing is, i have no recollection of how i get here in the first place. Holy cow! i think we're abducted by aliens and our memories wiped out!
i saw my best buddy beside me. *shaking him by the shoulder* "Wake up! Wake up! i think it's the aliens! Oh no, what have they done to us?!" *blood-shot eyes frantically dart around*
Suddenly, i feel the container being tipped to on side. In comes a giant brush.
Hmn..what's that? But before i have a chance to go closer and investigate, i'm knocked into a second wave of unconsciousness. Oh so that's how those evil aliens do it... too late now.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, i saw a giant black brush, a different one this time, (cos it does not have the pungent smell), entering the container. The brush is moving around the container. It's coming closer to me. i want to avoid it, but my body feel drained of energy. i feel lethargic. i can't move.
i let the brush to pick me up. (The hairs on my body hook onto the brush.)
Suddenly i feel solid ground again. And there's a bright light illuminating. i can't see a thing. What's going on? i want to know. But i'm so tired. Fatigue is slowly engulfing my body. My eyelids feel so heavy. My vision is blurring. i'm drifting into sleep again...
i was fidgeting in my sleep when i feel the giant brush again. It's poking me here and there, as though making me to change into different positions. And i'm just helpless. Too tired to move an inch, i let the brush do whatever it wants to do to me.
Funny feeling this is, i felt that there's a pair of eyes, invincible to me, scrutinizing my every movements and body parts. Never before in my life have i felt so...naked, so vulnerable....
i can't fight the sleepiness anymore. Again, my vision becomes dark.
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Yep, had my lab on Monday playing with Drosophila melanogaster a.k.a The Fruit Fly.
They look kinda tiny and harmless with naked eyes. However, on close inspection under the microscope, they look like giant, horrifying aliens with hairs all over the body. We looked at several types of the fruit flies. First, the normal, wild type, then those mutant types with different mutated parts of their body. And all these while, the poor flies were being poked here and there so that i can get a better view of some parts.
"Oh look, i found the balancers!"
And the flies were alive. They were just put to sleep, using this chemical thing use specifically to make flies sleep so that they'll be obedient for a about 50 minutes. Fun eh? That's how i spent my Monday morning.
Ooooh...did i mention that i extracted my own DNA the other day? Okay, i'm slowly turning into a mad scientist.
It was a take home assignment thingy. With a few stuff from kitchen, i extracted deoxyribonuclease acid from my cheek cells and put it in an eppendorf tube. And i was feeling *ahem* kinda proud of the amount of DNA i got, (it was the size of the bracket at the end of this line), until joo teng showed me his. *mouth agape*
It looks like a small freaking cotton ball!
And yeah, the secret is to gurgle the salt water in your mouth as long as you can. If you want to get DNA as much as a candy floss, i suggest one hour and more. Have fun experimenting!