Sunday, March 29, 2009

You dirty rat

Sometimes you learn something that you really should have figured out a long time ago. Today is one of those days.

For more than a year now, I've been studying medicine and on many occasions I've read about "murine models" of various diseases. Today I was reading about inflammatory bowel disease, and there it was again: a statement about murine models showing this, that and the other.

It was only today that some part of my brain went ping! and said to me, "You know, you have no idea what that word actually means."
PTR
Yes I do, murines are one of the two major types of compounds that DNA is made out of. So there.

Brain
Sigh. No, that's purines. How on earth could you have a purine model of a disease?

PTR
Oh. I'd better look it up on wikipedia...
So it turns out that murines are rats and mice. You know, the ones that get kept in labs and conduct fiendishly clever experiments on us. This is all starting to make a bit more sense now.

Shame it's not really examinable. "Question 1. Explain the difference between a murine and a purine." Still, probably useful to know in order to avoid future total humiliation, right?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

PTR - if you are talking to your brain, then where's your mind? Can you have a PTR without a brain?

PTR said...

Oh no, I've been outed as a Cartesian dualist! The shame!

Anonymous said...

Ten paces at dawn, PTR. Your choice of pistols or swords.

PTR said...

Hahaha - it took me a while to get that! How dopey of me.

I went off to wikipedia and started to read about Rene Descartes trying to figure out what the joke was. I thought maybe he'd died like Evariste Galois.