Guys in Speedos portraying chicken sperm...

November 22, 2013 6:36 AM

That's a winning combination for the "Dance Your Ph.D." contest, which celebrates efforts to turn doctoral thesis topics into interpretive dance. This year's top prize goes to University of Oxford biologist Cedrick Tan, for a series of dances based on his study of "Sperm Competition Between Brothers and Female Choice." The dance video has to be seen to be believed (and understood).
posted by billiebee (16 comments total)

I don't understand. Why is the non-brother sperm chosen by the egg (that is, brother sperm rejected)? And why is there more brother sperm in the first place?
posted by alasdair at 6:53 AM on November 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

alternate footage
posted by motorcycles are jets at 6:57 AM on November 22, 2013

Based off post title alone I thought this had something to do with Rob Delaney
posted by timshel at 7:10 AM on November 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

That video was amazingly well-produced as well as funny.
posted by jaguar at 7:35 AM on November 22, 2013

This is delightful.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:41 AM on November 22, 2013

There needs to be a Rap Your Ph.D. contest, wherein your committee members and you must have a rap battle. Blasdelb would have rocked the mic!
posted by evoque at 8:06 AM on November 22, 2013 [3 favorites]

Loved it! But still a bit confused...
posted by WalkerWestridge at 8:16 AM on November 22, 2013

That was pretty fabulous - and what a twist ending, too!
posted by harujion at 8:21 AM on November 22, 2013

We used to be friends back in high school! He's got a couple more science dance videos on his vimeo channel too!
posted by hellopanda at 8:27 AM on November 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

*sigh* Doctoral candidates in Speedos.

Yet another thing I didn't realize I needed in my life before the Internet.
posted by mykescipark at 9:31 AM on November 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

"There needs to be a Rap Your Ph.D. contest, wherein your committee members and you must have a rap battle. Blasdelb would have rocked the mic!"

Aww shit, sure they can drink me under the table, but my committee has got nothing on me,

Burn patients and those with CF know this,
It infects tissue from foot ulcers to bladders to the epiglottis.
It can't fuck with a healthy immune system, but not everyone has one,
and if antibiotics don't work, then fuck it, we're outgunned.
So despite its weakness, if you get it then your ass can be grass,
The shit fucker bacteria I study, of course, is Pseudomonas

I want to borrow tools from their greatest enemy,
So having observed an obnoxious flea
I just look for the smaller fleas knowing that even they are not germfree
And that we can use these smaller fleas to bite 'em.
as that shit does indeed proceed Ad infinitum.
Others are just using Pseudomonas phages,
but that will take time and my work might bypass those blockages.

These things are the viruses that infect the cells of bacteria,
Just like human viruses infect ours with Herpes or AIDS or a lot of pneumonia.
They kill more than half the Earth's bacteria bi-daily,
Hell, their absence probably even causes your acne.
They clearly have the molecular tools to kill these bugs
If I can find them, maybe someone else can turn them into working drugs?

To succeed, every phage must at some point shut down its host's metabolism,
Discarding or co-opting its host's tools like molecular scale Bolshevism.
Small phage proteins zombify the cell early in infection,
As they either fuck up host proteins or drastically change their function.
I want to find these monkey wrenches and figure out what they do,
so their structure can be copied in small molecules for people drowning in their own goo.

To do this I'm sequencing the RNA of phage infected cells
Because the transcriptomic profiles I can generate from this foretells
The timing and function of both the phage genes and their toothmarks in the host.
Really though, the benefits to basic research are what excites me the most,
Phage biology built the last generation of molecular genetics,
And if synthetic biology is ever going to convince its skeptics,
Phage tools for manipulating their hosts, I think, are an easy source for the next great breakthrough.
Think I'm not serious? Check out my tattoo.
posted by Blasdelb at 12:34 PM on November 22, 2013 [12 favorites]

Blasdelb for the PhD win!

Hmm, could I do this in Aramaic... ?
posted by Dreidl at 12:50 PM on November 22, 2013

Dreidl: it can be done!
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 1:44 PM on November 22, 2013

Why is the non-brother sperm chosen by the egg (that is, brother sperm rejected)? And why is there more brother sperm in the first place?

I could well be wrong, but there is more brother sperm because there is sperm from two brothers, competing against the sperm of one non-brother. And I *think* the brotherly sperm is competing against each other (maybe to get to win the prize of passing down that family's genes?), so while they're busy with that the non-brother has a better chance of sneaking through. that may all be totally wrong but it makes sense in my tiny mind

What's more confusing is the last video in the list, which illustrates something about cancer cells through the medium of salsa. It's worth a watch (if just for the cute kid dancing at the beginning), and the dance made sense to me as a total layperson in terms of a normal cell pattern versus the cancer cells. Right up until the "treatment" stage... which apparantly consists of summoning Batman.
posted by billiebee at 2:05 PM on November 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. I love this so much I can't stop squeeing.
posted by desuetude at 6:10 PM on November 22, 2013

Blasdelb, hope that didn't hurt when you were FAVORITED HARD, BABY!!
posted by BlueHorse at 5:15 PM on November 23, 2013