Not a whole lot has happened lately. Ashtyn is as cute as ever, so I included two little video clips of her. One is with her new toy from Grandma Bates who came to visit last week and the other is from today--it was pretty hot here in Provo, so we went outside and cooled down with a little water play time. Both videos are cute because it shows her little "bashful" look that she gets when she does something that she's kind of tickled with herself about.
Cute huh? Just in the past few days, Ashtyn has also learned a few new "tricks." She can give you a high-five, tell you where her head is, and make (sorta make) lots of animal sounds. Her "bark, bark" sounds more like "eh, eh" and her ferocious "roar" sounds like a little dainty "ahhr."
Tyler did have a fun, serendipitous thing happen at work this week. He's been trying to clone this gene and finally got it to work, or so he thought. There was actually a random mutation in the gene, which would usually be a bad thing, but amazingly enough this mutation changed the functioning of the gene to be what's called a "dominant negative" form of the gene. Scientists have been really interested in getting a dominant negative form of this gene for research purposes, but no one knew what mutation of the 1000s of possibilities would create what they wanted. But, Tyler had it just randomly happen this week. He still has to make the non-mutated version, which should be a snap, but this version has the potential to be passed out to other research labs around the world and really help scientists understand early neural development. Cool.
2 comments:
That is really cool! Tell Tyler congratulations on the gene. That stuff is so interesting to me. I really wish I were wealthy so I could stay in school forever and learn all that. Anyway, Ashtyne is so sweet. Cute.
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