The math nerd studying to be Vetinarian.

My Lab intro about reflexes.

.... can be quite weird. 

Just reading up on my lab course intro and this marvelous thing comes along:

“Reaction time is fastest with an intermediate level of arousal, and deteriorates when the subject is either too relaxed or too tense.”

The thing that really frightens you, is that you almost volunteered to do this and it doesn’t actually make you feel super annoyed.

Instead, you are, god help us all

....

That you get an email from one of your professors, with a picture of an ear in a culture. Clearly being grown in vitro. Also, you know what in vitro means.

So, I’ve been drowning in genetics, and well, even when I’ve thought of jokes, I’ve been keeping away from my computer while reading, so I can actually get my reading done, so .... they haven’t been making it to here. Hopefully I’ll remember some of them.

when your teacher makes a long analogy about enzymes and kinky sex, without mentioning sex, just you know .... back pain ....

Basically, enzymes activated by phosphorylation, which normally inactivates enzymes, are pain-loving kink sadist/machochist, depending on how you look at it. I promised never to write down how .... but just ... wanted you guys to know this at least.

so much time and energy, that I don’t have enough to spare on snark. Ha! Who knew?! /maybe everybody everywhere knew vet school was hard, but shit, it is.

On top of just saying that, I just wanted to let you know two things.

One, your body is constantly cheating its own rules and systems to get what it needs.

Rules: “You can’t pass this stuff through this membrane”

Body: “Huh, too bad, guess I’ll just add three billion enzymes and call it a shuttle and while actually obeying the rules and not transfering this particular stuff through the membrane, I’ll just change it, transfer the new stuff through and then change that back. HAH!

Two: There are WAY too many enzymes to learn in metabolism. What is worse, is there are 10 time more that you don’t actually have to learn. But you read about them anyway.

I was reading about neurons, and the transmitting signals and suddenly had the (horrible) idea to become a psychiatrist. Which, god, I am not going into med school as well as vet med school. I am clearly going crazy. Send flowers.

So, I have a few different images in my mind to explain hemoglobin binding to oxygen.

Hemoglobin is put together out of two dimers (protein structures), that are REALLY GOOD FRIENDS. They are very tight, tell each other everything, hold hands and most important, never talk to someone else. That’s their taut state.

When hemoglobin comes to the lungs, it slowly starts to see all these new people, O2. Maybe they get a little drunk one evening, and at first, it’s just the two dimers, the BFFS, out on the night together, caught up in each other. Now, as they get more tipsy, they start looking at these O2 and finally, one of the dimers decides to try out life and chat up a O2 molecule.

This of course, weakens the whole, taut state, the tight BFFS, because now dimer(a) has a new friend in her life. This is the relaxed state.

This lead to dimer(b) to ponder the rest of the soup of people (O2) and they start chatting with one as well. This obviously happens faster than it took the first dimer to start sociallizing, because lets face it, dimer(b) is now even more drunk and has just felt the distancing of her/his friend.

This then leads to dimer(a) to reach for more people (O2) or maybe the O2 that she/he was talking to just called its friend over. Anyhow, this is now fast progression of frienships formed and soon the hemoglobin is filled with its 4 O2 molecules. They now travel together towards the tissues.

Now, I need you to remember that when they lost their taut state, relaxed, they were drunk, in a bar full of O2. So naturally, they made some connections. Out here in the tissues though, there are few O2 and the dimers are sobering up quickly. The oxygen are also kind of regretting taking a ride, because they’re pretty keen on meeting some cells now, because they hear that that’s where all the fun is.

This leads to the connections loosening, until the O2 leave the hemoglobin and the dimers resume their taut state, happy to have their BFF again.