Stuff is wooooh great here!

[enismirdal]

- spent all day learning an exciting new skill in the lab. Didn't get to the point where I could have collected data had I been out looking for it, but all went swimmingly given that I'd never tried it before, and I didn't break anything.

- received license from Defra to keep some insects I want to import as long as I'm Very Very Careful and take all the precautions they ask for. I assume this will be a nice thing to put on CV.

- have officially been added to British Bone Marrow Register. Given that I'm not a cool, exciting ethnic minority I don't know if I'll ever be called on (they REALLY need more African, African-Caribbean and Asian people here in the UK, though of course they always need more white Caucasian people too), but if someone needs me, I'm there. I think that's pretty much all my bits of body now made publicly available.

- first half of first series of Lewis has arrived today from LoveFilm.com - hooray!

- am getting really quite good at clipping Quinine's teeth. Still can't make her stay still, but between the two of us we get there in the end. The thing is, they seem to do best when clipped every 3-4 days. I guess she's officially a Special Needs hamster and I couldn't go on holiday for more than half a week even if I wanted to!

- brother has found a really nice house about 7 miles away from me, so far enough that we won't get on each other's nerves, but close enough that we can meet up for beers occasionally.

I am bouncy. :D

Comments

[innocencest.livejournal.com]

Curious. If there are less of certain races in Britain, surely there'd be less race-appropriate bone marrow required by medicine? Or is it the case that, proportionally, some races have very low donor rates and are thus desperate for supplies?

Either way, I'm still a little boggling over the idea that bone marrow depends on race. I know there are different kinds of blood, but I'm reasonably sure every race has every blood type in approximately equal ratios?

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Or is it the case that, proportionally, some races have very low donor rates and are thus desperate for supplies?

That's exactly the case - for example, less than three percent of the black African community in the UK are on the bone marrow register. I think the reasons for low take-up are more a lack of penetration of the promotional material so people are unaware of the need, and worry that it's incompatible with their religious beliefs, rather than any active selfishness though.

I know there are different kinds of blood, but I'm reasonably sure every race has every blood type in approximately equal ratios?

Well, the two blood antigens, A and B,evolved in two different parts of the world at different times. So humans were ancestrally all O, but some groups of humans acquired B and other ones acquired A, and only when the two met did ABs start to emerge. The maps on this site (http://anthro.palomar.edu/vary/vary_3.htm) show the varying prevalences of the blood groups quite well. Also, this awesome table from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type#ABO_and_Rh_distribution_by_country), which shows the prevalence of each different type in a variety of countries - for example, most Asian countries have a higher prevalence of B than Europe, but Estonia for some reason has 20% group B (whilst the Netherlands, not so far away from there, only has 6.7%).

I think bone marrow matching is even more complicated. As far as I remember from 2nd year pathology, it depends on Human Leukocyte Antigens, of which we have 6 and each one could take any of a huge number of possible values/alleles. Two people match if 5 or 6 of their HLAs take the same value as each other. So it's pretty much like looking for another person with the same lottery numbers as you! But values of HLA are inherited (i.e. you'll have half of yours the same as each of your parents) and locally frequent (i.e. particular values are more common in Saudi Arabia, and different ones are more common in Australian Aborigines). So if you're an Arab needing a bone marrow donation, odds are the match will come from another Arab rather than from a Norwegian!