Let’s make a developmental biology bingo game!
Posted by Eva Amsen, on 5 December 2011
Ever noticed how each field has its own jargon?
Benchfly, a site with free video protocols and other resources for researchers, has created “Group Meeting Bingo”. The site generates bingo cards with the particular phrases common to various fields of research. They have cards for biochemistry, cell biology, and various other fields, but no developmental biology…yet!
So, let’s make a developmental biology bingo game!
Over the next few weeks (until we have enough words), you can leave a comment below (no registration required) with your suggestions for typical words that regularly show up in developmental biology talks. Benchfly will then turn our suggestions into a playable bingo game!
They suggest taking out the cards during meetings, but I’ve enjoyed just refreshing the existing cards on the site and marveling at all the field-specific words.
Section of one of the cell biology bingo cards. Of course some of the words from other fields can appear on the developmental biology cards as well!
Looking forward to see what you all come up with for the developmental biology game!
NB: The Node does not endorse playing bingo at the expense of paying attention to talks. Personally I’ve played a similar game at a conference where the meeting organizers handed out the cards, and encouraged everyone to play. I found it very easy to pay attention to the talks there, take notes, learn things, and still win the game. It’s actually easier to spot the words if you are paying attention!
Stage, Segement, Fluorescent, Morphogen, Cancer, Clone, Genomic, Notch, Wnt, Cytoskeleton, Migration, Stem Cell, Asymmetric.
Embryo, pattern(ing), lineage, vertebrate, fate.
We have many things in common~
phenotype, canalization, transcription factor, microarray, oogenesis, cell cycle.
mutant, goo, ectopic, band, blot, grant, in situ, selective, upstream, transgenic, UTR, miRNA, transplant, stem-loop, tagged, signal/noise, precipitate, review, electroporate, espresso.
master control gene, morphant, injection, gradient, phylogenetic footprinting, maternal, crosses, model organism
embryonic lethal, mutagenesis, organizer, gastrulation, migration, initiation, knock-out
node :) germ layer, mechanism, germ line, somatic, regulation, methylation, amniote, cis-regulatory, epigenetic, gene regulatory network
induction/induced, morpholino, knock down, inhibition/inhibited, signaling, injection/injected, phenotype, disruption/disrupted
Thanks for all the suggestions so far! Keep ’em coming.
I like how ridiculous the “recent comments” box in the sidebar now looks. As if we had a spam attack by people selling biological processes. (Free gene regulation with the purchase of gradients!) :)
evo-devo, germline, RNAi, embryo, adhesion, DIC/Nomarski
maternal effect, dynamics, high resolution, confocal, array, knockdown, null
Primitive Streak, Somites, neural crest, Hamburger Hamilton, constructs, confocal, FAC sort
stem cell – it seems every sort of cell during development gets classified as a “stem cell” these days!!
silly gene names on the way:
Sonic Hedgehog, Viking, disheveled, Hox, Trithorax.
EMT, RhoA, Snail
AGM
in vivo, cell lineage, commitment, differentiation, pluripotency, patterning, determination, decision, embryo
I’ve now collected all of these, corrected some typos, and removed duplicates. I also took out a few very specific ones and replaced them with more general terms to make it a more fair game for everyone (eg. “espresso” was replaced with “zebrafish”, “expression” and “database”; and “phylogenetic footprinting” is now just “phylogenetic”)
I also added a few myself: auxin, Drosophila, Xenopus, Xist, AP axis, Frizzled, chromosome, gene, blastocyst, epiblast, ICM, immunostaining
Final list is off to BenchFly now!
Actually Eva, I was referring to the beverage. How does anyone do bench work without caffeine? Granted, too much coffee can make loading gels challenging (as the pipet tip vibrates). I like the BenchFly bingo card generator – nice work on this project!
Ha, but that’s not very devbio-specific…
Granted there are broader repercussions. It could be the event that triggered the industrial revolution: the switch from beer to coffee at lunch.