They're ready for their closeup

 

Andrea and I were hard at work this Friday getting ready to mail out the squid adoption cards!  The cards are all ready to go, so we took to photographing individual squid for the over 60 people that named squid!  It's kinda challenging to take a crisp picture of something so tiny but we think we found a solution with 3mL cuvettes!

Normally in our lab, a cuvette is used with a spectrophotometer to measure either cell density or perhaps the concentration of a given solution.  Spectrophotometers work by shining a light through a sample (inside a cuvette) and based on how much light goes through, you can determine how much "stuff" is in the sample.  For example, I might want to do an experiment to see how my squid's cells react to specific types of bacteria.  It's important to know exactly how many bacteria I'm adding per squid immune cell, so by measuring my bacterial culture using a cuvette inside a spectrophotometer, I'll know how much of the culture I need to add to my squid immune cells.  But today the cuvette is just useful because it's nice and clear which makes it easy to take a picture of this adorable little squid :)