
desmond tobin
Originally from Navan, in Co. Meath, Des lives in Dublin with his wife Anne, son Ferdia, and daughter Saoirse. When not in the lab, Des loves to garden and travel.
The square tile of fired clay with a sculpted dendritic melanocyte in blue glass was a gift from one of my first PhD students, Dr Sobia Kauser (Bradford, GB); the work of her own hands. Her PhD project with me was focused on melanocyte biology. On the reverse side of the ceramic tile are some kind words Sobia wrote to me at the conclusion of her PhD under my supervision.
This elegant piece of engineering was an object I found when I was clearing out some of my late father’s stuff. It probably is at least as old as I, and reflects my father’s interest in mechanical engineering. He was an exacting man, in terms of precision – a Virgo. The bright green spirit level reflects my Da’s and I guess my own striving for work-life balance.
A fun piece that symbolizes a connection with my late father; his life-long interest in motor engineering (inherited from his own father before) and my interest in observing the natural work (via microscopy).
I picked up this wonderful, fossilized fish during a trip to the Meteor Crater in the Arizona desert. This fossil is approx. 40 million years old and forces us to reflect on our human lifetime lasting the equivalent to half a second in relative terms. Should prevent hubris?
This is a piece of naturally-shaped wood fragment washed up on a river bank somewhere in Quebec Canada, which I spotted while walking with some French pals back in the late 1990s. I am distracted by its uncanny similarity (to my eye) to the head of a native American with head-dress in profile. I brought it back home with me, and I’ve hung it on the wall of various apartments and homes I’ve lived in since then.
These small pieces are called histological blocks of biological tissues are embedded in paraffin wax, that facilitates their sectioning on a slicer (called a microtome) into super-thin slices that can be subsequently stained in dyes for observation under the light microscope.
A pair of unscientific looking glasses contain specialized lenses that prevent the transmission of high energy light, like UV light or even parts of the visible light spectrum e.g., blue light. We wear these glasses in our lab when we irradiate our tissue and cell samples with high-energy light, in order to protect our eyes from damage that can lead to cataracts and macular degeneration.
This rather unassuming empty plastic bottle once contained so-called OCT (or ‘Optimal Cutting Temperature’ embedding medium. This was used to embed frozen pieces of body tissue to support it during fine slicing, before collection of the sections onto a microscope slide for staining and observation. Another way to support tissue at room temperature before slicing is to embed it in paraffin wax, as can be seen in these two small tissue holders.
Another item that requires us to think of relative scales. This item reflects about 2 mm of human haired skin, showing that skin is more than a body covering, but an entire organ replete with complex plumbing like blood vessels, nerves, hair follicles, sweat glands, sebum glands, and much, much more. It demands much more thought and care than perhaps we are used to giving it. Skin cancers are more common than cancers of all other parts of the body combined, and can be the most deadly (like melanoma).
Originally from Navan, in Co. Meath, Des lives in Dublin with his wife Anne, son Ferdia, and daughter Saoirse. When not in the lab, Des loves to garden and travel.
Originally from Navan, in Co. Meath, Des lives in Dublin with his wife Anne, son Ferdia, and daughter Saoirse. When not in the lab, Des loves to garden and travel.
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