Daily Archives: August 8, 2017

Fruit loops

Rants

Aside from naming Howard “fruit loops” on the big bang theory, his official astronaut name, fruit loops can appear in strange places, to wit, on the back staircase of what has been called Kettering Laboratory, or the Department of Environmental Health, at the University of Cincinnati.  I have been tracking this little “fruit loop” for many months.  The progress it is making towards being swept up by the crew that cleans the back stairs is monumentally slow.

This reminds me of my best colleague ever, in electron microscopy research, fruit loopfrom about 1980 – the early 2000s, she and I monitored some dead bumble bee or wasp (or maybe is was a flying red roach) on the stairs in the oldest wing of the building (which is no longer standing due to the lack of foresight of the “visionaries”), at one point using a sharpie to circle it and date its appearance (this was after it had already been there for several years).
ONE more day and counting 8-9-17

I am taking bets on the fruit loop.  Maybe already about 3 months have passed…  I will keep you posted.  Ha ha.

fruit-loop is gone  8-10-17 (i think someone is monitoring my blog… ha ha)

MVB/LE/PFC in macrophages can be other than rounded

Electron microgaphs of lung, Legacy Perfluorocarbons, The cell: images

Multivesicular bodies in alveolar macrophages are generally roundish, not always perfectly round, but more round than elongated.  Here are two multivesicular bodies-late endosomes with inclusions which are presumed to be E2 left over from liquid breathing (MVB/LE/PFC) which have lots of protein enzyme content (way more in a volume ratio than E2) and have an elongated shape.  There is a large reaction to the E2 droplets in terms of enzyme production.  So the ratio of perfluorochemical to protein in the lysosomal structures might give a clue as to the characteristics of “export” or “offgassing” of these liquids from the body. The size of the smallest E2 particle in these micrographs is slightly larger in diameter than a ribosome (taken from the same micrograph and enlarged similarly (two insets at right are from the respective boxes top and bottom in the portion of the alveolar macrophage, and there are many MVB, different sizes and many E2 droplets with different amounts of enzyme.  I would guess that the smaller droplets are more enzyme packed than the larger droplets — equating to residence time within the macrophage cytoplasm???