A very extensive collection of videos about protists produced by George Sartiano, who may be contacted at sartiano@hotmail.com.
New for 2012! A new collection: "Marginally Microscopic Multicellular Organisms".
We're very pleased to have this collection of educational videos on the site, which are especially good for training students of protistology to notice and compare diagnostic features. Dr. Sartiano was kind enough to provide a brief biography, which explains his lifelong passion for protists. --Ed.
I've had a lifelong interest in microscopy, science and Medicine. I wore out two AC Gilbert microscopes before I was thirteen - mostly looking at protozoa - and bought the microscope (which I used later in medical school) before I was fourteen. My first research paper - a Biology 101 project on the effects of thiourea on regeneration in planaria - is still circulating surreptitiously at Brooklyn College among freshman Biology students - (I believe the topic is still an elective choice on the list of required projects).
I studied parasitology under Harry Most at NYU School of Medicine, and I had a very practical application of the material as a Captain, USAMC, during the Vietnamese War. I saw numerous cases of malaria and many cases of hookworm, amebiasis and other tropical infectious diseases.
I am an Internist specialized in Hematology/Oncology - former Director of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, where I did a great deal of laboratory research on the mechanisms of action of chemotherapeutic agents, and conducted a great many funded clinical investigational studies as well. My clinical career spans over forty years. (I trained in Hematology at Memorial Hospital and the Sloan Kettering Institute, and in Cancer Chemotherapy at NY Hospital - Weill Cornell Medical Center).
In my retirement, my middle son suggested I go back and pick up my youthful interest in microscopy - and voila - I discovered Chinese instruments on the interenet - and the rest is (a ten year) history of revival of my interest in protozoa (now protists).
I count it a wonderful opportunity to see and record and share what I have found; protozoology (now protistology) continues to hold a great and intrinsic fascination and scientific interest for me - no doubt because it combines science, microscopy, Biology, technology, computers and protistology in a very beautiful, balanced fashion.