It's My Birthday

...so no blogging. Instead, I'll leave you with a "make sexy time" photo (to steal Borat's phrase):

10_02

It's E. coli having sex. Well, actually it's conjugation. Many bacteria have plasmids which are 'mini-chromosomes' (antibiotic resistance genes are often found on plasmids). The bacteria are able to build protein tubes ("pili") and send copies of plasmids to another cell.

More like this

Astute ERV readers have noticed a couple of odd things about my research. 1- How the hell am I cutting and pasting bits of a retroviral (RNA) genome together? 2- How the hell do I have a (seemingly) endless supply of HIV-1 for my experiments?
Over at The Tree of Life, Jonathan Eisen asks: What do people think are the potential benefits that could come from finishing?

Dude: You just blogged that you're not blogging. Now I have cognitive dissonance. Or perhaps you do.

But happy birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday from South Africa :)

Happy birthday.

By Mustafa Mond, FCD (not verified) on 24 Dec 2006 #permalink

Happy Birthday

By Larry Lennhoff (not verified) on 25 Dec 2006 #permalink

Cheers Dr Mike, Happy B-day

Aw yeah. You better transfer those plasmids for genetic recombination.