An ill-conceived question

I am not a representative of any committee, if exists, that works upon the genuity of questions in the entrance exams or interviews for PhD admission at IISER-Mohali. Nor I expect neither I will be entertained if I try to correct the questioners on the spot. However, I can be vocal enough on my blog.  Dear PhD aspirants, please beware of following question if asked in the IISER-Mohali's PhD/int-PhD interviews:

Cell size in nature remains constant, but the cell number increases. An example of human and elephant will be projected

The statement proves the popular notion in quantum mechanics, "Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong if you wait long enough". However, I did not need to wait long enough to wait see the wrong. Since I joined my present institution, I see this question popping up in one or the other interview.

Cell size is not a constant property of living beings.  In eukaryotes only, it varies by 300,000 fold. Throughout biology cell-size/shape matters. It is under adaptive selection. Think of a blood cell that has to pass through thin capillaries and think of a axon that spans through your spine. Think of a oocyte and think of a sperm.  Think of xylem, think of phloem. Think of stomatal guard cells, think of root hair cells. Think of collenchyma, think of sclerenchyma.  One can argue that comparison between same cell-types in different species should be made. Fair enough, think about cardiomyocytes of human and mice? And hold on, I have not been extreme in my examples, else I could cite the comaprison of amoeboid to a virus cell.  Cells are different in size and shape for the obvious reason, perhaps not that obvious to questioners, this thing called adaptive selection in evolution. Sounds familiar?

But then why the question is being asked and what answer are the questioners looking for? I do not frankly know the correct answer to "why", may be a typical case of verbal diarrhea or an ignorance of utterly arrogant nature. The answer they are looking for is the surface area to volume ratio of the cells. If the volume increases, surface area increases rather slowly and therefore transport rate, and hence the growth rate, will be compromised. However, the nature had other plans.  The observed decline in growth rate is very very shallow, suggesting that  either the transport rate is not the limiting factor or it is compensated by higher production of transporters and channels.

If at all, you are looking for a cellular property which largely remains constant, it is "karyoplasmic ratio" and again not for the reasons they cite. It is to keep the balance between nuclear and cytoplasmic processes like transcription and translation rates. The news for the questioners is that the noncoding DNA seemingly expanded or contracted in genomes to keep the karyoplasmic ratio constant!

The champions of bullshit

Science administrators are my all time favourite bullshitters. But when it comes to science speaking, some young investigators are the big time champions of bullshit. ABSOLUTELY NO CONTEST!

Exaggerated tone on expected results is common. Uncommon are the new ideas and hypotheses. Same old stories of role of a gene/protein or few in a particular process. Assumption that deleting a  chunk of protein will keep the physiological properties of protein intact and others will have some impact in the manner they test it, seems too naive to be interesting and enlightening.  Claiming desired change upon knocking down common signal transducers, transcription factors or epigenetic modifiers  is like expecting an animal to survive after acute dehydration.  Some even tinker temperature and expect no response as null ! Well, my phone also hangs up when heated up! Wonder about the source of motivation and the nature of excitement the young PIs cherish in doing so. Bullshit stinks when someone claims that the deletion of quack quack domain has a role in blah blah interaction, while other domains are dispensable. Really? Thanks for the insight ! Would you kindly elaborate  the changes in  biophysical properties of the that protein? Does it still fold? Does it still phase separate? Are the cells fine, why to shy away from normality of cell-cycle curves.  Biophysics, the bullshit pours in again, peeing something onto proteins and voila the conformation changes ! Thanks, I experience that every morning when I flush. And, the protein-protein interactions, we need to be in awe.... yeast two hybrids with >50% false positive rate seems the favourite toy, validating through partial col-localization of some clumps inside (and sometimes outside) the cell that is sandwiched like an omelet between two glass pieces, the immunofluorescence, as if both the techniques are complementary to each other! They are not even self compatible. Despite severe flaws, not working out an alternative approach seems so un-enlightening. Yet the bullshit is stuffed in the ears as the work is likely to cure the human diseases in future, though not done on normal human cells at first place.

Get a life !

Plunderage of most scholarly type and the making of assholes

I experience a sense of duty mixed with fear (of being late and penalized) when it comes to income tax filing. Most of us, as citizens of this country, feel accountable towards the law of the land. But, where is the accountability of the government funded science institutions? I express my agony against the severe lack of accountability for the use of public money in science and higher education. The recent funding crunch in country’s science is no excuse to plunderage of past. There are institutions having poorly managed multiple copies of the same expensive instruments. Each of such instruments cost a few crores of INR and the plunderage is not an inappropriate term to be used. One might disagree and counter-argue this view. However, why these arguments are needed at all if there can be a transparently managed official platform for the accountability of public money in science institutions. Since most of the instruments and other facilities are funded by the very same handful of agencies, a database can be managed and made public. Surprisingly, many of these institutions do not even declare these facilities on their official web-pages. The institutional reviews by external peers appears a formality and no real issues are assessed. It might not be appropriate to argue on why these facilities do not fetch even a single cell, science or nature article, the real issues are the ignorance, arrogance and the severe lack of co-operation. Why can’t these facilities be limited and shared democratically among the seekers? After all, these instruments are not discovered by scientists in their backyard neither they diffused in from parallel universe as an investment by aliens in Indian Science. Why do most scientists become assholes?