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Old 02-06-2017, 04:46 PM   #1
Thralni
Looking for eggs specifically

Hello all,

I realize this is a little awkward. People are of course attached to their pets, which they have reared over years. Still, I'm going to go out on a limb here and see if perhaps anybody is willing or able to help out. This is going to be a bit of a special request for a special reason.

For now I'm hiding my name etc just in case somebody here decides to target me for the work I do... Call it self-protection.

I'm a PhD student at Columbia University, working on the development of the lung. The lung is an intricate, complicated organ that's, of course, vital to our survival as adults. In my research, I study a very basic process of lung development: how some parts of the lung become equipped for respiration, whereas others are equipped merely for conducting the air to the respiratory tissue.

While my work so far has only been in mammals, I would like to expand to snakes.

I have worked on snake development previously, mostly looking at the lung, heart and blood vessels. Some of you are probably aware of this already, but the snake lung is rather different form that of mammals: essentially its a blind-ended sack, much like a very elongated grocery bag. As such it lacks much of the modern complexity of mammalian lungs.

The question I'm asking, is how through evolution the snake lung came to be the mammalian lung. For this I will employ techniques that will allow me to see where certain genes are being turned on.

But, to do this, of course I need subject matter: snake embryos, which is why I came here, to ask, specifically for corn snake eggs. I will then take the embryo out of the egg for further study. Yes, this does unfortunately mean that the embryo will not develop into an adult...

If anybody can help with my request, I'd be very thankful! My professor is willing to pay a modest sum per egg, but please note that we don't have endless funding and therefor can't pay too much... I'm sure we will be able to work something out however.

Thank you, and hoping to hear from some of you.
Thralni