Saguaro

Saguaro - 3

Quiz #3; Virology	(Put each of your signatures
07 September 1999	somewhere on this paper.)

The Mystery of the Saguaro Measles: Chapt 2

..... When Wilbie and Jason took the bus over to UNLV and talked with several of the professors there about their colleagues' observations regarding the Saguaro Measles, they were told that this disease had long been of interest to them, but they didn't know how to proceed. ..The next morning all five of the students showed up at Prof. Inam's lab, where they had lots of equipment at their disposal. ..First the students cleaned the needles off two of the saguaros - one with measles ("+") and the other without ("-"). ..Using a potato peeler they then stripped the outer layers of tissue off and placed them into a small blender in separate batches. A couple of gradients of CsCl were made and overlaid with filtrates of the blended peelings. ..While the centrifuge spun at 18,000 rpm, the group walked over to the Liberace Museum, and there saw all the glitz of yesteryear. ..They also saw that all around the walls near the ceiling were little music scholarship plaques - and one was for a 4-year scholarship to a student from W&M back in the early 1980's. ..Back at lab finally, they dripped the fractions of both tubes and got the 280 nm profiles shown combined in Figure 1. ..They then re-analyzed the tubes at 260 nm getting the profiles shown in Figure 2.

..... Taking only the tubes covering "A" and "B" from the set of fractions derived from the measley blend, they divided subsequent studies between themselves. ..Mary Lou was given a couple of drops of both fractions and told to see if she could infect healthy plants, and give them the measles. ..To Mary Lou's consternation, Jimmy went off with Cheryl to subject their samples with trisodium citrate, a strong chelator, and then with DNase and RNase prior to recentrifuging. ..They returned with these results: ..DNase had no effect anywhere; RNase had no effect on "B", but did manage to degrade about half of "A". ..Meanwhile Wilbie yanked Jason away from oogling Cheryl and took him to the animal room to inject their portions of "A" and "B" into 'used' psychology rats for antibodies. ..Since the immunological outcome would be a week or more away, the hopped back on the bus and went to Circus-Circus to watch the Flying Walendas, do the water park called Grand Slam Canyon, and win some prizes at the archade.

.....What have the five students learned so far?

.....Mary Lou:

.....Wilbie and Jason:

.....Jimmy and Cheryl: ..

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