I chop up babies...Worm babies that is!

These past few months have given me many stress because my cocoons just weren't hatching. I basically walked around lab all day with this face...

Actually I was really bored at the eye doctor, not stressing about baby worms. I am sexy, I know.

The only babies I saw around were these guys...

I have a holy crusade against cockroaches...NONE SHALL PASS

Which I also murdered...and NOT in the name of science...But because they are a blight upon this earth that must be destroyed! If I could create a roach genocide...I would totally do it.

In addition to earthworms, I am also a roach serial killer.

And then, as I was down in the basement getting random science crap out of the stockroom, I decided to check on my worms which are now housed in a sweet temperature controlled unit and not a refrigerator. And low and behold...BABIES! And not the weird premature babies I got before, but fully formed and functioning earthworm babies!

Since my babies are hermaphrodites I picked unisex names...Meet Jamie and Jesse

Sufficed to say I quickly did a dance of joy...then preceded to butcher them into small pieces so I could put them in plastic and slice 'em up. I now will have data from the largest and smallest worms, which is kind of needed when you are trying to see how size affects how worms function. Anyhoo I am now a happy Jess. This New Year may suck less after all :)

My sporting my ultra sexy Happy New Year hat.

Histology (Part 2): THE EPIC CONCLUSION

So now that you have ogled and marveled at worm babies, I must sadly announce I have murdered several of them in the name of science. I'm afraid there is no way to cut open a worm and measure its innards without killing it. Yes I am indeed a horrible, heartless worm serial killer. But at least now I can use these measurements to predict how baby worms move and generate forces when they burrow! Okay, so it's not much of a consolation...

So last we left off, I had boozed and killed and chopped it into pieces and put the pieces in a jar. Where did I put the jars? Where any crazy person puts body parts, the fridge!

I put the worm parts in the 'meat' drawer.

So now that I have parts I need to cut them, but as you know worms are floppy, so I need to put them in hard stuff to make cutting them easier. Usually histologists use wax, but I am fancy and use plastic (more specifically, glycol methacrylate or GMA) so there isn't any heat that could distort the worm body. All I do is fill molds up with a plastic goo that hardens with time and shove my worm parts in.

Worms in plastic...like Han Solo in carbonite... minus the possibility of surviving the  process

So once I have a nice hunk of worm in plastic, I use a cutting machine called a microtome to take very thin sections of worm in plastic. Here is a vid of the microtime cutting one sheet of worm:

You'll notice the knife I use to cut the sheet is made out of glass. Yeah, that's right. I make and use glass knives. I'm a badass.

I then take the thin worm slices and heat them on slides so they stick to the slides. The final step once I have worm slides is to dye them so I can tell what is what in the worm body. The dye I use is a mix of acid and powders. The dry form of this acid is EXPLOSIVE. It is a small miracle my lab still exists after I tinker with the stuff.


Here are some slides in dye...

You can see I accidentally spilled some dye above the tray when I put the slides in . Shh, don't tell my boss!  

And here is the final product!

Cross section of a worm. You can see the worm has 2 types of muscles, I will talk more about how they work soon!

Sagittal (cut from head to tail) section of a worm. The septa you see is a muscular barrier that isolated the body cavity of each segment. More on this soon!

 Now I measure the inside dimensions of the worm! From this data I can predict the effects of its body dimensions on its movement and force. My plan is to test these predictions later on with movement and force recording to see if they match up to what I predict. If my predictions don't match what I see, then worms are even more complicated than we thought! And you thought they were just spineless poop machines, for shame...

Notice how my worm slides are red and green, like Christmas colors!  Who wouldn't want worm slides for Christmas?? Okay, okay, I am kidding. Instead you will get a corny Christmas card or something.

Your favorite body part hacker,

The 'Dirty' Scientist

Worms...They are Kind of Like A Penis

I'm making this blog to document the strange field that is science and my thesis on how earthworms and other squishy burrowing animals (such as sea cucumbers, clams, sea anemones, and marine worms) work as organisms. Earthworm burrowing is considered super important because it aerates the soil which helps plant roots grow and it helps the soil retain water among other things. Worms are also great composters, their poop is coveted and sold as garden fertilizer. I've never seen so many blogs and web forums dedicated to how to get the most poop fastest. So I want to know what life is like as a squishy animal in a stiff coarse environment (wow that sounds like the trailer one of those inspirational movies, huh?)

Dirt. It's what's for dinner.

Am I putting you to sleep already? But earthworms are cool! Wake up! I have cake! Okay not really...


So I thought I'd start my first blog post explaining why earthworms are pretty awesome since I'm probably going to spend the next few years of my PhD life thinking about them and other soft-bodied burrowing critters. Yes, yes, I'll get to your genitalia in a minute, that is one of many reasons. To begin with:

1.For my fellow science nerds, I'll have you know Charles Darwin wrote a whole book on them (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Formation_of_Vegetable_Mould_through_the_Action_of_Worms)

2. They are job creators...we should elect them into Congress. Yes, people have dedicated careers to breeding/harvesting and selling worms for composting, agriculture, and bait. For example, see http://www.earthworms4sale.com/

3.They are a cheap, low maintenance pet when your dad refuses to get you a dog

Yes, my dog's tongue really does stick out all the time!

4. They sell them at Walmart. Can't beat one stop shopping. Razors..? Check. Apples...? Check. Animals for thesis project...? Check.

5. There live friggin' everywhere. They can be found on remote islands, deserts, tundras... all over

6. They are hermaphrodites and have a bizarre sex life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkm3CCX1_xk

7. The babies are as small as 0.1g, yet some worms are as big as 1.3kg/ 1.4 meters long: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhsH2okFNGU

8. They have no brain!

9. They live in a place that very few people do (besides mole people)... underground

Underground. Homey.

10. They have blood, but I don't think you're considered a vampire if you eat them

11. They don't have eyes but can detect light using cells all over their body

These worms are mad because I was digging and screwed up their perfectly fine burrows.

12. Their poo or 'casts' are coveted like gold for fertilizer. You will never see so many articles on how to get a critter to take a dump.


13. Their genitals are near in their 'head' region. The place where you eat and mate are close by, handy!



14. They reproduce by making cocoons, how cute!

I know, the cocoons are adorable!

15. Some worms can hibernate, so they will survive the nuclear zombie apocalypse.

Do zombies eat worms?

16. You can eat them! Bear Grylls and Jake Gyllenhaal did on Man vs Wild, nom nom nom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7CbbFAX2Pk

17. Many can regenerate body parts, particularly if their tail gets cut off. Luke Skywalker is jealous.

18. They are kind like your penis... Worms have a fluid filled body cavity called the coelom surrounded by muscle/flesh. This skeleton gets stiff by pressurizing the fluid, aka a 'hydrostatic skeleton'.

When a penis gets engorged with blood ...assuming you don't have erectile dysfunction... it also fits the description of a hydrostatic skeleton http://www.nasw.org/users/DianeAKelly/Research_files/Kelly2007.pdf

And neither worms nor weiners have a brain yet seem to have a mind of their own... They aren't the exact same, though. The membrane surrounding the fluid sac in worms is arranged in a so-called cross-helical pattern (basically in left and right handed helices) in worms which is good because it allows the worm to lengthen and shorten...you WISH you could do that with your penis!. On the other hand, this arrangement lets the worm bend easily, and if a penis were bendy...well...things could get tricky. So penises have membrane fibers that run around the circumference of the penis and along the length of the penis... a so called 'orthogonal' arrangement . Sorry, you can't change the dimensions of your penis, but at least it's not floppy either!

Hope you enjoyed my first post, more squishy science soon :)

-The 'Dirty' Scientist