First off, our next video is taking a bit longer than planned and this month was also shorter, who could have foreseen this! But, fear not, for it'll be out shortly. This one is sponsored by Nebula and so we'll have a companion video where Justin can go more in depth into the minutia of genetic design and show how it’s actually done. We’re trying to strike a balance between entertainment and informational content to continue bringing in large numbers of viewers on YouTube; which pays our bills, but we’re also committed to showcasing more technical and in-depth information when we can. This sponsorship offers us a unique opportunity, as it encourages us financially to take the time to make these extra companion videos. Videos viewed on Nebula also happen to give us a proportional share of the revenue from subscriptions which translates to a much higher pay per view compared to YouTube.
With this in mind, if you haven’t subscribed to Nebula, you can follow the link below, as that’s always helpful. But also, we’ve been pretty bad at self-promoting Nebula and indicating that the videos can be viewed there. Which is something we’re hoping to remedy moving forwards.
Now for a bit of store news… so apparently tariffs are back starting March 4th, or maybe it’ll be April, or who knows when. Let’s just say that on our end we’ve focused on selecting Canadian manufacturers and retailers and are actively cutting out as many US suppliers as we can from our supply chain (this includes our video production). Most of our customers and viewers are American, but if we need to purchase materials from across the border and import it into Canada, assemble it and then sell it back to US customers, then US customers get hit with a second tariff. Short story, the less times we have to get things across the CAD-US border the better it is for everyone. This mostly impacts the products that we make in house (the next video is announcing some really cool things coming to our store), but for the print on demand material we’re still trying to see how the tariffs will affect those sales. Some distribution centers are already in the US, so we have to see how and where duties are applied.
From the Cutting Room Floor
We've received soooo many requests for more Jerry content that we had to make a full video! Our testing of Jerry’s electrical activity really sparked some interesting discussions at the lab. The responses to electrical stimuli were so clear and loud that we endeavoured to design a control loop incorporating these responses. I’m not going to promise anything here that we can’t deliver, as it’s still very early and we haven’t finished coming up with the most absurd ways of displaying these unique responses. But I’ll let you all in on a little secret, we’ve made some serious progress on our neuron chip design, the first testing prototypes have been ordered and we’ll be able to use Jerry to test their responsiveness to its signals. We’ve already got some good recordings of Jerry using Multi Channel System’s MEA and so we know what to expect.
But more on last month’s video, we think we’re the first to publish good high quality microscopie footage of Fuligo Septica (Jerry’s given scientific name). Over the past 2 years we’ve been upgrading our microscope for just this reason, well not Jerry specifically, but to film and showcase some of the cool bio experiments we conduct. Papers generally have a few pictures, often blurry and/or photocopied 15 times, and it’s often not easy to visualise a lot of the concepts presented in them without conducting the experiments yourself. Something we are acutely aware of is that it’s not within everyone’s means. We’re really proud of the shots where we can see the dyed nuclei zooming past in the channels as well as the rapid healing process when said channels are damaged.
As we mentioned in the video, Jerry doesn’t like light, but how does Jerry know there is even light? The pigment that gives Jerry’s distinctive yellow colour, fuligorubin A could be playing a role in photoreception and the energy conversion during Jerry’s life cycle. Our timelapse set up hasn’t really allowed us to capture this behaviour and to test out its applications more fully as the famous Tokyo transit network experiment. We’ll be coming back to this, especially as a Japanese team has isolated the pigment in question.
Another weird quirk of Jerry’s we haven’t been able to test yet is its incredible ability to resist zinc poisoning. We’re not quite sure what to make of this, or how we can make a cool demonstration of this “talent”. But it could come in handy as it’d seem we may not need to gold plate zinc solder joints? How cheap can we go with our recording arrays?!
In The Works
Alright, next video up is a genetic design bonanza, be sure to stay tuned for it, as it’ll also launch our first DNA sale! The first items on sale will be demonstrated in the video with all the information needed to incorporate them in specified bacteria. Of course this is not a kit for the complete newbies and will require access to the basics of a bio lab. But from your feedback, and hopefully the feedback from the sale of these DNA constructs will allow us to build kits that are more beginner friendly. If there is enough interest, we’d love to make class sized kits that can be purchased by educational organizations, but one step at a time!
Following this video we’ll be heading back to the world of x-rays as we’ve now started building our CT scanner. We’re going to be using some unconventional materials as shielding, but hey, that’s par for the course and if it’s stupid and it works, it’s still stupid, but it worked.
Finally like we mentioned there is some good forward momentum on the neuron project, we’ve got the prototype recording arrays ordered and we’re hoping that Jerry will be able to cooperate on the testing phase as Jerry doesn’t require anywhere near the sterile growing conditions that neurons do. Speaking of neurons though, we may have gotten ourselves a supplier of human neurons, we do like putting the man into man-made horrors. ;)
Neat Finds
Implanting a tooth in the eye to restore sight!?
A first for Canadian medicine, where a blind man is undergoing a multi surgery process to implant a camera, in a tooth, in cheek flesh into his eye socket. Not for the faint of heart.
So if teeth can be used to implant cameras, couldn't we just grow more teeth?
Well yes we apparently can!! By inhibiting the USAG-1 protein, we can induce teeth genesis and speed up their development. Who wants to have their wisdom teeth removed every 3 years?
