Monday, October 01, 2007

Monday's Molecule #45

 
There's no structure today. Instead, I've given you a photograph of a flower. Isn't it pretty?

You have to guess what molecule I'm thinking about, using the peculiar colored flower as a clue. It's the pattern of purple/pink stripes that gives it away. What molecule caused that pattern? There's a direct connection between this molecule and Wednesday's Nobel Laureate(s).

The reward goes to the person who correctly identifies the molecule and the Nobel Laureate(s). Previous free lunch winners are ineligible for one month from the time they first collected the prize. There are three ineligible candidates for this Wednesday's reward. The prize is a free lunch at the Faculty Club.

Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk(at)bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule and the Nobel Laureate(s). Correct responses will be posted tomorrow along with the time that the message was received on my server. This way I may select multiple winners if several people get it right.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours. Comments are now open.

2 comments:

  1. We don't have a winner this week although several of you came close. The "molecule" that I was looking for was a transposon. It's the random excision of the transposon that gives rise to the pattern of pink pie slices in the flower.

    Some of you saw where I was going with this and correctly identified the Nobel Laureate who won the prize for discovering transposons.

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  2. you must have a lot of free time on your hands. some valuable info though, thanks!

    ReplyDelete