Workshop Booze Up VII - New Year, Same Plague, Same Booze Up, Deja Vu

[Pentagathus]

I peeled a rat's brain and mushed parts of it up into a cellular soup. Good times.

[Jubal]

How do you peel a brain? Does it have an outer membrane of some sort?

[comrade_general]

Did you then eat the soup to gain the rat's knowledge?

[Pentagathus]

It does indeed have an outer membrane, or rather outer membranes, the meninges. I did not drink the soup, the rat was only one day old so it's knowledge was presumably not worth drinking. I put the soup on some silk.

[Glaurung]

A-ha. Presumably the meninges are the membranes whose swelling causing meningitis - when they swell up, then can't expand outwards (because of the skull) so they expand inwards, squeezing the brain. Squeezed brains don't tend to work very well

Next silly question: why did you put the rat brain soup on the silk?

[comrade_general]

Because otherwise it gets the hose again.

Spoiler

It puts the lotion on its skin!

[Pentagathus]

No hoses cowman, I didn't even eat the rat's kidneys with fava beans and  a nice Chianti.
It puts the soup on the silk to assess how well cortical neurons grow on that particular silk, to be used as a control for assessing how well they grow on the silk with DHA being present. And ultimately to see if addition of DHA can overcome the effects of an inhibitory environment.

[Jubal]

I finally seem to be in a fairly prolonged crash-phase after my weekend away; I've got an annoying sore throat and my brain is pretty non-functional for any useful purposes today

[Glaurung]

Penty: OK, I think I understand. Certainly silk seems like an inhibitory environment for neurones to grow in, as opposed to more conventional places like brains, or at least places with a circulatory system to supply nutrients.

Jubal: I fear I may have infected you over the weekend   If so, I'm very sorry.

[Jubal]

I don't think the symptoms are terribly similar to yours, it's a sore throat but it's not inducing coughing - I was around a lot of people at the weekend, more so than usual, and could have picked it up in any number of places.

[Glaurung]

OK, hopefully I have defeated the evil virus's plan to conquer the world.

[comrade_general]

Painted a house today.

[Gmd]

I got out of bed today.

[Pentagathus]

No G, the silk is being tested as a potential guidance scaffold (across the empty cysts formed in spinal cord injury), the inhibitory environment will be made by using chemicals.
It turns out making these silk dishes is even harder when you're focusing hard on sneezing all over them.

[Glaurung]

OK, thanks for the explanation: it makes a lot more sense now.