Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve seen a variety of awesome crocheted items, mostly hats and amigurimi based on fictional characters. But artist Shanell Papp is more interested in real human beings. More specifically, what’s inside of us. Back in 2006, Papp crocheted LAB, a life-size skeleton with organs.

In an interview with Order of the Good Death, Papp mentioned a variety of reasons why she made LAB. She says that she’s into “death, medicine and horror”, and growing up was very curious about what our insides are like and what each part does. Aside from looking at anatomical textbooks, Papp actually borrowed a human skeleton to use as a reference when she was making LAB. All in all it took her 8 months to finish her work.

He’s ready for CSI: LittleBigPlanet. I highly suggest you check out the full interview on the Order of the Good Death. Papp has more pictures of LAB on her blog.

[via Laughing Squid]

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Japanese researchers from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology recently announced that they have cloned one mouse a total of 581 times. They did this by making clones, then making clones out of its clones and so on for 25 generations. The Nutcracker is screwed.

Original images by Karl Palutke and CJ Isherwood; resulting masterpiece by Lambert Varias

The researchers, who began their experiment back in 2005, used a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer. That in itself is nothing new; in fact it’s the same technique that was used to clone the legendaryDolly the sheep. However, according to Live Science and the researchers themselves, repeated cloning was usually highly improbable, if not outright impossible, probably because successive clones had genetic defects in them. Interestingly enough, Dolly lived for only 6 years, even though domestic sheep live 10 to 12 years on average.

To counteract the defects, the Japanese used trichostatin, a histone deacetylase inhibitor or HDI. HDIs are compounds that stop certain genes from being expressed. As a result, not only is my nose bleeding because of all these advanced biology terms, the 581 mice clones (seen above) “were all fertile, they gave birth to healthy pups and lived a normal lifespan of about two years, similar to normally conceived mice.”

The leader of the research team Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama said that they hope their breakthrough could be used to make “superior quality animals” for conservation and agricultural purposes. All I know is that it is imperative that these people not get their hands on Jango Fett, or we’re all doomed.

[via RIKEN, Cell Stem Cell & Live Science via Popular Science]

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