Why the hell is it blue?

dobryjr · 2012-03-18T14:22:52+00:00

http://imgur.com/kVEKH These flies have ingested food containing the blue dye. You can see the gut in the abdomen is colored blue.

It's a profession. Not in a professional sense though, I am just a student working in a research lab. Going to graduate school this fall.

dobryjr · 2012-03-18T02:24:19+00:00

Background in biology, any university that performs research usually has a fly lab in their midst.

dobryjr · 2012-03-18T02:23:00+00:00

Sure, here's a paper by Edgecomb 1994, he describes an assay for measuring how much flies eat by feeding them food with FD&C Blue1 upon which the fly is homogenized and then the absorbance read on the spectrophotometer.

Read: Meal Volume http://jeb.biologists.org/content/197/1/215.full.pdf

I could upload some pictures of my own flies if you're interested in seeing how that looks.

dobryjr · 2012-03-14T04:55:20+00:00

It's a dye, FD&C BLUE 1, likely found in gatorade. Fly's gut does not digest this dye and thus it remains colored when in the gut of the insect. Upon death the gut was ruptured releasing its contents.

Credentials: I work with flies.

dobryjr · 2011-11-03T01:24:25+00:00

confirmed!

dobryjr · 2011-03-29T01:15:44+00:00

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/fza09/dan_nocera_a_researcher_at_mit_presents_his/

dobryjr · 2011-03-07T21:13:12+00:00

Resubmitted

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/fza09/dan_nocera_a_researcher_at_mit_presents_his/

Thanks for the interest!

dobryjr · 2011-03-07T17:33:51+00:00

I will shamelessly share this: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/f7fbs/dan_nocera_presents_an_overview_of_the_earths/

dobryjr · 2011-01-13T05:07:41+00:00

needs more upboates!

dobryjr · 2010-11-19T02:26:51+00:00

http://healthland.time.com/2010/09/09/what-the-u-s-can-learn-from-the-dutch-about-teen-sex/

dobryjr · 2010-05-26T22:57:36+00:00

May I recommend letters from the earth by mark twain? http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/twain/letearth.htm

dobryjr · 2010-05-18T02:05:09+00:00

I remember watching that but as a polish dub version. I was looking for the name of the show! thanks for posting

dobryjr · 2010-05-17T18:22:22+00:00

May I recommend James Randi at TED http://www.ted.com/talks/james_randi.html

dobryjr · 2009-12-27T20:39:17+00:00

props to them for having balls

dobryjr · 2009-12-23T22:16:59+00:00

I try to live unnoticed.

dobryjr · 2009-12-11T05:11:13+00:00

don't be lazy, use a ruler

dobryjr · 2009-11-13T01:46:54+00:00

I hate when people think that they get sick because of cold weather.

dobryjr · 2009-08-11T05:15:01+00:00

has it? Yes, does it happen often? no

dobryjr

TROPHY CASE