Dinococci... not to be confused with Deinococci.

Sometimes when you are keeping your eyes open under the microscope, you can find things that look like macroscopic things. For example, a T-Rex.

A student was looking at K. rhizophila under the microscope. The cocci had arranged themselves like a dinosaur, tiny arm included.

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Scholarly Flubs

Ahhh the lingo of the internet. Slang for words we already have, sometimes even disguised as clever onomatopoeia: FAP.  Yes, fapping.  Slang for male masturbation.

Recently on a final exam, a student confused this slang word for FAS ligand, a signalling protein responsible for binding to the FAS receptor on cell surfaces in order to induce apoptosis, or cell death.  I couldn't help but chuckle when I read her response:

 

So I guess there really is no moral to this story, other than to either: a) make sure that you have a glossary of abbreviations and actually learn what the letters mean, or b) get your head out of the gutter before you write your exam.  Sigh. 

As an added bonus, someone else's brain was a little stimulated when they wrote up a lab for me last year... see if you can spot it.  We were doing a floating leaf disk assay to measure photosynthesis...