Organic Chemistry is overcome.

Posting from a much brighter and happier place than I was even last night.
Apparently the Organic Chem 2 grades have been posted, but I still have yet to see my grade on the internets, so I took a trip to Brooklyn College to look at my final exam and see if I could find out my score.
Luckily for me, I don't have to retake Organic Chem 2. I got an A on the final and an A- in the course, and I'm more than happy. Failing Organic Chem 1 back in 2008 was the final nail in the coffin for burying the idea of veterinary school in the ground, and now that I've tackled Orgo one, passed it, and now done the same with Organic Chem 2 (without having to fail it before passing it) I feel pretty damn good. All I need to do now is find Lenny and hug the crap out of him.

Sully...or should we say... Silvia?....or should we say...Cilantro

Every year, my alma mater hosts "Ag Field Day", a day of celebration for Cook College campus that involves animal shows, tasty food, vendors of unique items, and much more. Every year that I've attended, I've been particularly attracted to the bug "expo" the Entomology Department brings. I loved playing with the Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches and this year, I bought one. When I bought Sully, he was about the size of a small firefly and kind of puny looking. Recently, Sully had his first molt and turned into a pudgy little beetle-looking thing. This was him after he molted and went back to normal pigment:

Big chubby boy! He literally became THREE times the size he was when I got him. Since the molt, he started growing out a little bit, and got slightly more chunky.

Slightly more chunky bug!

But the last few days, he seems to have .... elongated. Somehow.

I feel like he's still the same width. 

However, someone on r/entomology has brought up that judging by the ventral plate (not to mention lack of the horns that male hissers get)....Sully might be a Silvia. So for now, as I was quite fond of the name Sully, and I'm not too sold on Silvia just yet, I'll be sticking to the gender neutral "Cilantro". 

Aside from getting longer and wider, Cilantro has gotten some spunk. I read that the warmer their environment, the more active (and sexually active) hissers get. And Cilantro has been running around like crazy the last few days. Usually, he's easy to handle, and kind of chills on the back of my hand while I type, but the last few days I can barely hold him without him running all about. Teenagers....jeez... 

Today is the greatest...

Today was my organic chemistry 2 final. It was...bittersweet.
I definitely learned a lot this semester, mostly thanks to Lenny (brilliant genius orgo group tutor man). It was an intense ride, this past year. And it's kind of rough talking about it. I started this blog so late and I didn't even get to talk about Michaels, Claisens, Aldols....All that good stuff.

But I anticipate much and more writings for Biochemistry, provided that I pass Organic Chem 2.

As I told Lenny earlier today, had someone in 2009 told me that I would have come this far in chemistry, that I had RETAKEN Orgo 1, passed it, and now (hopefully) passed orgo 2... I would have thought they were crazy. I would have said something like "only if Lenny teaches it".

That's funny. Lenny did teach it. Lenny taught me everything I learned. Brenner and Greer....they just grade my exams. They don't do much. So, instead of being overwhelmed, scared, or frustrated about now having to take two semesters of biochem (1&2), I'm almost kind of excited. Lenny is my professor not just for general chemistry (Summer 2008) but he has now been my professor for Organic Chem, and is going to be my professor for Biochem 1&2 through his group sessions. He might not be grading or writing my exams, but he's the professor behind the scenes.

Quickie for memorizing the Saturated and Unsaturated Fatty Acids

I knew this weeks ago, and somehow it left my brain, but came back fairly quickly, just like Lenny said it would. I sent Lenny the video that helped me with the Amino Acids and he was not impressed.

Lenny: " the problem with using other peoples memory tricks is that you wont have these tricks in med school and you need to develop your own tricks..."

And you know what? he's absolutely right. Brilliant genius man is always absolutely right. And he was right about this. So here's my trick for me to remember the Fatty Acids.

We have the Saturated fatty acids (the ones with no double bonds): Lauric, Myristic, Palmitic, Stearic, Arachidic
And we have the Unsaturated fatty acids (the ones with double bonds): Palmitoleic, Oleic, Linoleic, Linolenic, Arachidonic

Turns out, the Saturated Fatty Acids, when you take the first letters of all of them, you can say something like "Lenny Makes Public Service Announcements"

Since they all are lacking in double bonds, their "structure number thing" is # of Carbons:0

This is a weird ugly crooked photo but whatever. I just know that arachidic has 20 carbons, and I go bottom up, with even numbers, until I get to 12. So... 20:0, 18;0, etc etc.

Unsaturated Fatty Acids

I don't have any fun mnemonic devices for them, but I do have a system for remembering how many carbons, how many double bonds, and where the double bonds start from.

This system goes back to my beliefs that good things (usually) come in threes. So, for Arachidonic, we have to remember that there are 20 carbons. The next there going bottom-up are 18's (good things come in threes), and then Palmitoleic has 16. The number of double bonds (going bottom up), you have to remember that arachidonic has four, then you count backwards with 3,2,1 and then you put a 1 for palmitoleic because we're in unsaturated land and everyone needs a double bond.

For remembering the carbon from which the double bonds start... Go bottom up from arachidonic (there are three sixes in a row because good things come in threes), and then 7 for oleic, and then 9 for palmitoleic because 9 is a backwards P. 

YOU'RE WELCOME.

**Edit**

I just realized, I should have been a bit more specific about what the last column means. Know how you read about omega-3, omega-6 etc etc fatty acids? That last column is the "omega" number. It tells you on which carbon in the chain the double bond falls on. So.. Arachidonic Acid is 20:4:omega-6, and so on.

**2nd Edit**

If you still don't understand what I'm talking about, it's because I didn't really explain what fatty acids are, or what their structure looks like, but there's no time. Here's what arachidonic acid looks like, briefly:

So much for this being a "quickie" 

A Step by Step Guide to Dropping the Base....or A Step by Step Guide to Drawing the Heterocyclic Aromatic Amine Bases

As I was drawing these out, I had a sudden urge to do this entire post in Pirate Speak. I will refrain from doing this. This post is entirely for the sake of my sanity in trying to memorize the heterocyclic aromatic amine bases (what your DNA is composed of).

We have the pyrimidine bases (Uracil, Cytosine, Thymine) and the purine bases (Adenine, Guanine). 

The way that you remember that the PYrimidine bases are U, C, and T is that you: "CUT PY". Cytosine, Uracil, Thymine, PYrimidine.

So.

PYRIMIDINE BASES:

Here's the first pyrimidine base. First we draw pyrimidine and then add a "U" shape for Uracil, fashioned out of the C=O groups. Give the Nitrogen's their H's and add the double bond to mimic pyrimidine's structure and there's uracil.

Next we have Cytosine. I'm going with: it has an -INE so there needs to be an extra amine in there SOMEWHERE so we replace the top carbonyl from Uracil with the NH2, add the double bonds where appropriate and there you have Cytosine.

Last pyrimidine base: Thymine. All we do, because we're AWESOME and already know the structure for Uracil, is we add a methyl group to uracil. Dat it.

PURINE BASES: 

I struggled for a while with memorizing the structure of purine, let alone its two bases. So, because we're in the animal world, lets think of purine as purrrrrrine. "I always landed on all fours...like a cat"

I'll make this photo slightly larger, to have everyone see that I actually forgot one of the double bonds on sadcat's head and drew it in with paint. But, this is a way to draw purine. Take your cat, let it outside where it can get FIV, FeLV and then HBC all in one day. They'll have to amputate its ears because they'll be giant hematomas, your cat will lose two legs, and his tail. Sad cat will be very sad.

Here's a slightly different way to draw purine if you don't like sad cats.

I supposed this is slightly less ridiculous. Okay. Now we know how to draw purine. Let's draw Adenine and Guanine. 

Take care to notice that I AGAIN forgot to put in a hydrogen. Let's NOT do that on my final exam (WHICH IS ON WEDNESDAY). Here's adenine. Just add the NH2 to purine to make it an additional INE. It'll be happy that way.

By reminds me of Avocado, I really meant reminds me of Guacamole... which is made of avocado..but I figure I would mention why Avocado. That's why. That's how. 

There we have them. Hopefully this isn't so abstract that I'll forget it. 

**Edit** 

In case anyone is wondering WHY....this is why:

Guys, this is what our DNA looks like. I have to be able to regurgitate this onto my final exam. Which is, again.... Too soon, too soon.

Ninhydrin. Bitches.

When taking Organic Chem lab (first semester), you do a lot of BS'ing. Especially when you have a lab instructor that doesn't really give a crap about what you do. This semester, however, I had an AWESOME lab instructor (Alison) who was ridiculously helpful, so I actually understood (almost all of) the experiments we were doing, could visualize the mechanisms behind them, and actually thoroughly enjoyed lab this second semester. As it turns out, Alison is a awesome BADASS and used to do forensic science and all sorts of awesome shit like that. ALSO, she is a climber/hiker/photographer/explorer extraordinaire. And if I wasn't an awkward fucktard, I would have asked her to be my friend after the semester was over. She's THAT cool, that I actually had thought processes of wanting to make FRIENDS with someone.

That was a HUGE side note to what I actually wanted to talk about, and then what I wanted to talk about even more. In organic chem lab (second semester), you do a few experiments that hopefully turn out well, do a couple of lab reports, and then you're given three unknown substances (be they solid or liquid) to identify. Guiding you is your raw instinct, undying desire to go to veterinary school, and a lab manual that says things like "The acetyl chloride test is unreliable for alcohol compounds with six or more carbons", meanwhile, EVERY unknown we get IS a compound of more than six carbons. The lucky ones have "Secret Agent Lenny Man" on our side, who tells us things we should ALREADY know such as "cool that shit slowly, don't just shove it into a bucket of ice" and "none of those tests actually tell you ANYTHING" and "you are all morons, but after this semester, you're all going to be slightly different morons". It's great character building. Thanks to Alison's neverending patience with my "PLEASE SMELL THIS DOES THIS SMELL LIKE ORANGE BLOSSOM? DOES THIS SMELL LIKE PEPPERMINT? WHY DON'T MY DERIVATIVE TESTS GIVE ME A SOLID COMPOUND" and Lenny's kind words of advice, I got all three of my unknowns correct for this lab semester, which is AWESOME and EXCITING and makes me feel like I DO SCIENCE.

So as a celebratory activity, here's the mechanism for ninhydrin. This shit is pretty cool, just like everything else I talk about. When you've got a bunch of amino acids and you want to know what's in your shit, you throw them all into this "Gel Electrophoresis" thing, and then according to the pH in the thing and the isoelectric point (more on this below) of the amino acid, they'll migrate to and fro and end up somewhere (in a very exact spot) on this "piece of paper" depending on what the amino acid is. Ninhydrin is the reagent to see this shit moving, as delicately put by Lenny. And it has a mechanism, a way that this purple shit (orange for proline, i think) tells you what's good. And here's a (horribly ugly because my board isn't big enough) rendition of said mechanism:

A nice and BIG photo for all of you to admire. There's an assload of proton transfers that goes on, and the end result I don't even have on the board. Because there's no room. So if you're THAT curious about the end result, I recommend googling in.

I mentioned that I would talk a bit about isoelectric points. Lenny taught us an excellent technique and I'll try to explain it in my own way that helps me visualize it. By using the board. again. But not now. Maybe later. 

Good news everyone!

Last night I was playing with Sully (my Hissing Cockroach) and I noticed his shell was looking kind of odd and that he wasn't being his normal self...whatever that means for a cockroach. I figured maybe he was going to be molting soon, but wasn't really sure when.

I literally just came home from school, took Rem out to play in the park, came home, and looked in Sully's "tank" to make sure it was warm enough in there and as it turns out...he molted overnight or while I was in school! Look how white and ENORMOUS he looks!