I remember 3 years ago in Immunology class, our instructor was discussing about Western Blot. Now all of us in our class have always been familiar with the Western Blot, being the confirmatory test for the diagnosis of HIV and all. And then our instructor discusses that there is also a Northern Blot, as well as a Southern Blot and an Eastern Blot. This has got to be a joke. I said to myself, in my head of course. It turns out, it really is a joke. The original of those four enzymatic techniques is the Southern Blot, named after Edwin Southern, the biologist who devised this method in 1975. Not too long after that, a group of biologists from Stanford University, namely James Alwine, David Kemp, and George Stark (wooo Stark! Winter is coming!) developed a similar technique, but this time for mRNA (Southern Blot was for DNA analysis). Stark and his friends, pun-lovers all, named it the NORTHERN BLOT, being in a sense the opposite of the Southern Blot (since it uses RNA). Some time later, Stark laboratories developed another technique, and the pun rampage continues. They dubbed it the Western Blot, which measures and analyzes proteins. Years after, people developed the Eastern Blot, which is an extension of the Western Blot, since it now measures carbohydrates. Today, there are a menagerie of other Blots from almost all conceivable directions, such as Far-Eastern Blots, Middle Eastern Blots, Southwestern Blots, etc. Now whats the lesson here? My love for puns is justified. Clearly, puns are the highest form of humor. It is the comedy of scientists, the kind of jokes worthy of high-level minds. B|
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 14:17:41 +0000