Why hello there I thought I’d take this opportunity to re-introduce myself. First of all, welcome to my Blog, ‘A Bug’s Life’. I started this Blog two years ago while I was still doing my Ph. D in Bacteriology, with the intention of writing about what life was like as […]
Bloody hell it’s been a little while since I’ve written a blog! This year is flying by. 😵💫 Where to start, really? Let’s go with the latest changes to the fish tanks… 🐟 First the sad news. Our dear snail Gary has passed on 😞 (24.4.22), which was a bit […]
Ever wondered how a rapid antigen test (RAT) works? Or better yet- ever wondered how a PCR test works? Well look no further, because I wrote about it a little while ago! 😂 I tried to make it as lay person friendly as possible and there’s lots of diagrams to […]
Phew! Apparently it’s been three weeks since my last post (which was about people stealing my work! 😠). That’s almost like a whole isolation period and a bit! Because it was. 😅😂 A couple Sundays ago, my partner and I went to a birthday lunch, followed by some shopping. I […]
I just realised that my figure depicting the intracellular infection cycle of my Honours/Ph. D bug, Coxiella burnetii, has actually been stolen and used in other websites. 😂 I guess this is why people watermark their work. I’ll be careful to do this from now on. Oops! If anyone sees […]
Well, it’s official- I’m going to have a lot of chillies. 😅 The first one is starting to go red. I’ve already started offering them to other people, so hopefully they’ll end up in happy bellies. As mentioned, I’m not much of a spice head, so I definitely won’t be […]
Well, as predicted, it’s been a very mild summer thus far. I’m not complaining- I hate warm weather, so this is great. 😂 So far the heirloom tomatoes I planted are growing like crazy. No 🍅 as of yet, though. You can see strawberry plants either side, but so far […]
We’ve had quite a monster run on this COVID PCR test explanatory series. Part 1 covered how to extract genetic material from your swab sample. Part 2 covered the basics of a standard PCR. Part 3 went over the very basics of an RT-PCR, which is what’s used for COVID […]
So far in our little series, we’ve covered how genetic material is extracted from a swab, and how a very basic PCR works. This third part will cover how the theories of a basic PCR are then applied to the fancy type of PCR used for COVID testing… Which is […]
So part 1 covered the process of extracting genetic material from your samples. But before I can explain the next step in the COVID PCR testing process, I first have to explain what a PCR is. 😅 PCR in a nutshell is the process of making lots and lots of […]
Okay. Who knew my previous post on rapid antigen tests would do so well. 😅 So while riding this brief increase in traffic, I’ll follow it up with posts describing the theory behind a COVID-19 PCR test. But given how large a topic this is, I’ve broken it up into […]
A Bug's Life 
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