Salps

I've always loved the diversity course I taught.  I was able to get really excited about the strange evolutionary connections between us and other creatures.

One of the most fascinating is the connection between the tunicates and us.  We're clearly vertebrates.  But roll back the evolutionary paths and we converge with a group that retained primitive characteristics.  They look like jellyfish - but are anything but!

Here's a video my friend Lex passed along showing examples of tunicates:

Descriminating pathogen gene origin

I wasn't sure where to put this, so this page seems like a good one.

In class we were looking at how to distinguish the pathogenicity of an E. coli bacterium responsible for "hamburger disease".  This shows you how to use the software.

To see more detail, click on the YouTube logo in the bottom-right corner and view this full-screen from the YouTube site.  Unfortunately full-screen doesn't seem to work in Blogger.

Good luck!