My labmates were curious to see what was in the big plastic kit that I brought for the strawberry DNA demo, so naturally, I had to show them. Part of the demo involves eating a strip of PTC paper to see if you have the gene that can taste PTC bitterness, and oh, woe on you if you do. Out of pity for the children who can taste it, the kit also contains a big pile of candy.
Oddly, every single person in the lab could taste the paper (compared to 25% of the kids I gave it to). Apparently there's supposed to be about a 50/50 prevalence of the gene. This made us very curious and we had to experiment on everyone that came in the lab. And, oddly, they could taste it all too! We had to try a few professors as well to round out the bunch.
Our conclusion is that the ability to taste PTC makes you bitter, and engineers are bitter, therefore engineers can taste PTC. It might need a few revisions, but so far our supporting data is really strong!
1 comment:
that is very cool. yay science!
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