sci_bastian

Two words: Chinese Room

This diagram was heavily inspired by @kurzgesagt.org by the way :)

A diagram of the cells of the immune system and its cells drawn on blackboard with colored chalk

Today's lecture was about the immune system.

For me personally, when I was a student, this was a very dry topic. Now that I am the professor, I tried to make it a bit more colorful :)

A black board with names of infectious diseases in German and colorful drawings of bacteria, viruses, and eukaryotic parasites

In today's lecture, I talked about infectious diseases!

I grouped them by their infectious agents:

Bacteria
Viruses
Eukaryotes (fungi, protozoans, animals)

🍄🦠🪱

Photo of a flowering bee orchid in the wild. The flowers kind of look like bees.

I found a bee #orchid in the wild! 😲🤓
I've never seen it with my own eyes. Almost surreal to just find it by the side of the path.

This orchid smells like female bees. And also kind of looks like a bee!
🐝

So, certain male bees attempt to "cuddle" with the flowers and thus pollinate them :)

I don't get it

Der Mensch als Spitze der Evolution? Warum dieser Neurobiologe daran zweifelt Der Mensch als Krone der Evolution? Neurobiologe Sebastian Markert zweifelt daran. Ein Gespräch über Orcas, Gorillas und künstliche Intelligenz.

My article is now officially published online :)
@taz.de

It's now possible to write comments :) :) :)

#orca #intelligence #AI

taz.de/!6081722/

Origami (model folded from paper) that looks kind of like raccoon

Raccoon Origami 🦝

Made from a 25x25 cm square of kami paper, black on one side.

Origami used to be one of my hobbies, but I haven't really done it in years. This one turned out decent, I think. Took me about 2 hours.

I made it by following instructions from a YouTube video

The eggs are upright oval shapes with a net-like scaffolding on the outside.

Butterfly eggs 🦋🥚on a leaf 🌿

We can see the individual cells of the leaf and the cool "exoskeleton" of the eggs that gives them stability.

This was taken with a scanning electron microscope :)

For German speakers:

I gave an interview to taz🐾 (German newspaper) about intelligence, AI, and orcas.

taz.de/!6081722/

Can I ask, many of these tablets are badly damaged. Do you just fill in the gaps with educated guesses, or how does that work (assuming you don't have several versions of the same text to fill in the gaps)?

YouTube video by sci_bastian Tour5-1: Fungi – Mushrooms

The fungi tour continues today with mushrooms:

youtu.be/myHmIVFYj-g?...

🍄‍🟫🍄

The are kept in culture for weeks, actually :D
You slice the brain and put the slices in cell culture medium. The damaged cells heal or die and are absorbed by the others.

The neurons even continue to grow and form synapses. It's all a bit spooky, I admit

A firework of brain cells 🎆

These are microscopic images of living mouse brain slices 🐁🧠

Some neurons in these slices have been infected with a virus that transfers a gene from a jellyfish to them. Those infected cells are now producing the jellyfish protein that fluoresces (glows when stimulated)

Look! It's Great-grandma!

This is a lung fish. It's more closely related to us humans (and all other land vertebrates) than to any other fish, believe it or not.

That's because it was a lung fish (so, a common ancestor of us and this fish) that dared to leave the water and evolved to live on land.

i’ve never been so obsessed with a video. please turn your sound on

Tim Hunt, der "Jungfernzeugung" im Seeigel verstehen wollte und damit die Regulierung des Zellzyklus entdeckt hat, wie Zellen sich teilen. Und damit letztlich auch, wie Krebs entsteht

transport them up towards our throat. Every time you clear your throat (ahem), the dirt is moved from windpipe to food pipe, to be disposed of and disinfected in the stomach :)

Close up of wind pipe cells. Lots of cilia hairs visible

Zooming out. We see more of the cilia. It looks like a long-hair carpet!

Zooming out even further, we see rows of cells making up the inner lining of the wind pipe

Zooming out all the way, we see the wind pipe cut open. Looks like a halved pipe

The trachea (windpipe) of a mouse.

This windpipe was cut in half, dried, and then imaged with scanning electron microscopy.

Ours looks very similar. All those "hairs" are cilia that move back and forth and that constantly filter dust and pathogens out of the air we breath and

YouTube video by sci_bastian Tour 5-0: Fungi – Evolution and Mysteries

Our new video is out :)

A 13-min video where we go on a guided train ride from the beginning of life to modern day fungi 🍄‍🟫🍄

What are they and what are their mysteries? Are they superior or inferior to animals? Might they have some sort of intelligence?

youtu.be/NO-vO6aBrJA?...

Meine Woche auf diesem Account neigt sich dem Ende zu.

Es hat Spaß gemacht :D

Zeit für eine Zusammenfassung. Ich füge hier mal einen Thread an mit den Highlights, also den Posts mit den meisten Likes :)

Correct! :D
You win

Selfie von einem Nachwuchsprofessor, der glücklich vor einer Tafel steht und eine Fliege trägt. Er hat gerade eine Vorlesung über unsere Sinne gemeistert und auf der Tafel sind Diagramme von Sinneszellen zu sehen.

Das Tafelbild im Detail. Zu Sehen, Hören, Schmecken, Riechen und Fühlen sind jeweils Beispiele von Sinneszellen gezeigt, mit verschiedenen Farben in Kreide an die Tafel gezeichnet und beschriftet.

After a recent lecture about our senses
#professorlife

Those tiny feet are adorable

Who can tell me what I caught here with my microscope? :D

Alright, time to start from zero on Bluesky 🥲

Follow for fun and interesting science content from a biology professor and YouTuber :D

My defining traits: positive and enthusiastic, bow tie, loves to tell stories, nerdy, eats too much sugar (but I won't post about that)

One of the best things I ever filmed through a microscope: baby squid! 🦑

Incredibly cute and their chromatophores already work right after hatching!

A guy with a bowtie in front of a black board. He looks happy after giving a biology lecture.

The black board. Apparently, the topic of the lecture was "The Cell". Drawings indicate 1. Cell membrane 2. DNA 3. RNA transcription 4. Translation 5. Proteins 6. DNA Replication 7. Cell division 8. Cell organelles. The blackboard also shows the descent of LUCA, the first universal common ancestor of all life today from FUCA, the ancestor of all life that ever existed.

Me after my first biology lecture :D

#professorlife

Happy to report it's as much fun as I expected

YouTube video by sci_bastian I found a Zombie Fungus in my own living room

youtube.com/shorts/5eWwn...