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  • January 20, 2021
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Maya Gopalakrishnan
JoinedNovember 16, 2017
Articles5
Maya is a first year Marshall student at UCSD, majoring in Biochemistry. She joined Saltman Quarterly in hopes of sharing her passion for biology and bringing awareness to the phenomenal research being done at UCSD. Outside of SQ, you can find Maya sketching and catching up on the latest season of Game of Thrones.

Where The Wild Things are Going

Maya Gopalakrishnan
Imagine waking up on a warm San Diego morning to the harsh squawks of tropical parrots rather than the gentle... Read More

Nature and Nurture: How Culture and the Gene Pool are Connected

Maya Gopalakrishnan
BY MAYA GOPALAKRISHNAN | SQ ONLINE WRITER | SQ ONLINE (2017-18)   There are two kinds of students: STEM and non-STEM. These... Read More

Wake Up and Smell the Climate Change: Could Coffee be Going Extinct?

Maya Gopalakrishnan
BY MAYA GOPALAKRISHNAN | SQ ONLINE WRITER | SQ ONLINE (2017-18) Figures emerge in the distance through the fog settled over UCSD.... Read More

Dinner from a Petri Dish: Could Lab-Grown Meat be the Future of Food?

Maya Gopalakrishnan
BY MAYA GOPALAKRISHNAN | SQ ONLINE WRITER | SQ ONLINE (2017-18)   You sit down at the dinner table, ready to inhale... Read More

The Hepatitis A Outbreak: Highly Contagious Virus in the Jewel of California

Maya Gopalakrishnan
BY MAYA GOPALAKRISHNAN | SQ ONLINE WRITER | SQ ONLINE (2017-18)   Living in La Jolla, a city renowned for its beauty... Read More

About SQ Online

SQ Online is part of the Saltman Quarterly program, a biology student organization committed to communicating science and research. The late Dr. Paul Saltman inspired the program’s creation, and the Saltman Family continues to generously support our efforts. For more on Dr. Saltman’s legacy, read our tributes.

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Hi everyone! We hope your first week back in class Hi everyone! We hope your first week back in classes is going well. Just last month we shared the article “Finding a ‘True Blue’ Friend in Nature” on our website and wanted to share it here as well! “On campus at UC San Diego, blue is a bountiful color, from the clear skies and great weather to the Pacific Ocean at our beaches. But despite the seeming abundance of blue in the world around us, blue still remains fairly rare in nature’s plants and animals. Blue pigments in plants are typically unstable due to their chemical properties.” The bird on the second slide seems blue, but has no blue pigment at all! This is because they “rely on the use of structural color—tiny physical structures on the body that interfere with light to create the optical illusion of the color blue.” “By using the right mechanism and pathway, animals are able to consume, modify, and eventually incorporate those pigments into their own bodies. However, animals that consume blue plants do not exhibit this same characteristic, and don’t integrate the blue pigments from their foods into their own physiological colors.” “Although blue plants exist, the chemical instability of anthocyanin pigments make blue shades largely subject to their environments. As a result, blue anthocyanin pigments in plants might be too sensitive to pH for animals to consume them and incorporate them into their own bodies as the same shade.” Thank you to our reporter Helen Zhu, illustrator Sara Kian, and photographer Bridget Spencer for the fascinating article! If you’d like to read more on this article, or any of our other articles, please go to sqonline.ucsd.edu. Have a great week 1!
Merry Christmas everyone! We wanted to share one o Merry Christmas everyone! We wanted to share one of our featured articles from this year! Early June, we shared the article, “Petri Dish to Big Picture: How Microbes Inspire Creativity,” to talk about Agar Art, an annual competition accepting submissions by petri dish rather than canvas. "Every year, scientists and artists together embark on a quest to create paintings with a rather unorthodox material: microbes. These tiny organisms–bacteria, yeast, and more–are often invisible to our eyes in individual numbers, yet they are found almost everywhere–from the bottom of the ocean to our own tongues. “Painting” with microbes can be difficult due to their sporadic growing times and diverse life cycles. Sticky E. coli bacteria are pushed outward by the more mobile A. baylyi bacteria, forming “petal” shapes that together create a flower-shaped biofilm. This flower pattern is one example of a biofilm, which forms when one or more species of microorganism grow together. Biofilms are found everywhere–hydrothermal vents in the ocean’s depths, showers and pipes throughout our cities, and even in our large intestines and plaque on our teeth. Paying attention to the natural patterns of life can inspire new perspectives on traditional processes, like those of creating a painting or conducting a scientific experiment. " You can find this article and more on our website, sqonline.ucsd.edu. Thanks to illustrator Arya Natarajan for the cool artwork! Happy Holidays :)
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