Chromosome Squash

    Someone said thorax at the lab recently, and I made a note to write down my related anecdote – I've already forgotten the context in which it was used in the lab, but the word thorax invariably takes me way back to my Cell Biology class junior year in college.

     Cell Biology was a great class – the teacher, Dr. Joan Lorch, was someone who cared about what and who was at each end of the microscope, and you have to admire that in a teacher! Not only was I learning a lot about a subject I was enjoying very much, but I was doing well in it too! Eager to keep up the momentum I plunged into each new unit determined to master the information. It also meant mastering the skills involved in the lab.        College labs had never been my most shining moments, hence the irony in working at labs for years and years since then – I'll have to keep at it until I get it right! And one day we started a unit on genetics – at the cellular level and lower – the chromosomal level.

In lab we were going to do what was called a chromosome squash – an insect with particularly big testes would be used, and if we did the squash correctly, we would be able to view the chromosomes in the light microscope. The insects we would be using were male crickets – I do not recall the Genus or species – just male crickets. We would be dissecting out the testes which are in the abdomen of the cricket.

     Well, I received my cricket and went to work removing the testes according to the directions in the lab manual. Then I proceeded with the chromosome squash – the steps of which are completely forgotten by now – and put the finished slide under the microscope to view!

     What I saw on the slide was not what I was expecting as per the pictures in the instructions. Dr. Lorch happened by – looking at everyone else's chromosome squashes through their microscopes. So she looked at my slide. And when Dr. Lorch straightened up she smiled a grandmotherly smile and said, “You have beautiful cells of the cricket's thorax on your slide; no chromosomes.” I was mortified. She asked how I had missed the testes – they are bigger than anything else in the cricket's body! Classmates were muttering the predictable comments about my not knowing where the testes of any male are – and I deserved that. I don't recall being given a second cricket to work with that day.

     And I've been doomed to being haunted by the word thorax ever more!

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