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  • January 20, 2021
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Blogs

An Intro to Student Blogs & Buzz

Brianna Egan
Step out from behind the lab bench and wade upstream through the rows of desks in Peterson Hall. Share your voice and lend an ear. Being a biology student, can be overwhelming at times (so... Read More

This Blog 101

Rahul Nachnani
I’m sure all of you know that one kid that likes what he’s doing a little TOO much. If you don’t, now you do. Hi, I’m Rahul and I’m not a typical pre-med student. Read More

Biology (and just about everything else)

Oliver Engel
Greetings, fellow sleep-deprived UC San Diego students! My name is Oliver, and I’m a first-year human biology major from Muir College. A bit about myself: I love history, art, literature, culture, and, most importantly, biology... Read More

No, I’m Not Pre-Med

Yaamini Venkataraman
Hi, my name is Yaamini Venkataraman. I’m a second year General Biology major. And no, I’m not Pre-Med. Read More

BIEB195: Applied Blogging in Modern Biology

Haebin Liew
*Disclaimer: This blog is graded solely on a P/NP scale and attendence is optional* Hello and welcome, fellow biologists... Read More

So what are you?

Yaamini Venkataraman
Now I bet you've spend the past four days wondering: if she's not headed to medical school, then where is she going? Read More

4D Printing and Cancer-Fighting Nanorobots

Oliver Engel
So you’ve heard of 3D printing, where various materials can be “printed” into static shapes based on a virtual model. But what about 4D printing? Read More

Which seat do I take?

Rahul Nachnani
IT'S FRID- oh wait, no. It's Wednesday. Unfortunately, Rebecca Black's infamous chorus Read More

To Bee or Not to Bee: A Trip to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

Haebin Liew
Waking up earlier than I have for any of my classes (6:00 AM to be exact), I eagerly waited for James, the graduate student... Read More

Frankenstein’s Monster: an Experiment in Physiology and Ethics

Oliver Engel
Shelley’s Frankenstein offers insight into the ethics of science, focusing on Victor Frankenstein’s experiments in human physiology... 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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