Thursday, July 31, 2008

Congrats to Danny and Darcie!

So I'm a little slow, but I wanted to just say congratulations to my brother and his wife, who just had their second baby last Friday. Here is a picture of Darcie, Mary and Derrick.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Live Blogging a Lab Meeting- Take II

So this time I'm going to live blog one of the other researchers in the lab- a lady by the name of Rouhi.

8:30 - She balks at the absence of people so she says we will wait.
8:39 - She complains that there are not enough people but we start anyway.
8:40 - She has a diagram of a standard cell with a partial outline of the Cu transport pathway. She is attempting to explain the pathway.
8:42 - An all too familiar picture of ATP7B is shown - she is talking about the domains. Certain "key" residues are pointed out.
8:46 - Discussion of xenografts
8:47 - Now she's talking about her published papers - is this gonna be all her talking about what she's done? Hmm seems like she may be taking advantage of the fact that Steve's not around.
8:48 - ATPase activity is pH dependent. Hmm.
8:49 - Dr. X is questioning how she characterized certain aspects of the paper- she gives an unclear answer. He pursues and she kinda dances around it- he gives up and lets her go on.
8:50 - Km and Vmax is discussed (I for one don't buy it, but I'm too busy typing to interfere)
8:51 - She's talking about an ex-coworker that tried to do molecular weight shift assays. She is very fast to criticize all those she had working under her, and fast to mumble defense of her work.
8:55 - She shows some kinetics that suggest that maybe it moves DDP- seems very unclear and non-specific
8:57 - She refers to Brian and his clones. Says that they've just been following what he did.
8:58 - Talks about the pMal-ATP7B complxex and how she has helped him purify it.
8:58 - NMR (only need 5 mg of protein- is that all- only takes 5 L of media! Oh yeah, and like a month of non-stop work)
9:01 - She's now showing Mohammed's work and all the gels that he ran. I decide to ask about what appears to be a weight shift- I am told that even though it's higher it's not anything. Hmm...
9:03 - She is asked about cross-linking and non-specific by Dr. X. Again she says well that isn't a problem.
9:05 - She has the NMR data up and is fumbling through what she obviously doesn't know.
9:08 - She has a figure out of a new paper and is unsure what it is but is trying to say that it shows that the 7B is rigid with Cu and 7A is not. She says that she hasn't read the paper but this is what it tells s (don't ask how she knows that).
9:10- Cu and DDP bind similarly to 7B. She is telling us where she's headed next.

And that's it another shorty- man I love these (esp. since the last one was almost an hour and a half).

Live blogging a lab meeting

So I thought I'd give a few people an idea of what I do every Thursday. I decided to live blog a lab meeting.

8:35 - We arrive in room, there are a noticeable amount of seats missing
8:37 - Projector turns on, we wait
8:39 - Brian introduces the topic, DMT1
8:40 - Figure #2 comes up first, he explains that the order is to help us understand, not necessarily exactly how they were published
8:41 - DMT1 seems to control Cu (I) and Fe (II) transport
8:42 - Figure #3. Ascorbate controls the uptake of Cu AND Fe (III)
8:43 - The "more important" figures - figure #4 - As you treat with more Fe you actually decrease the amount of Fe being taken up over 60 mins, same thing with Cu
8:44 - "The money shot." Using Antisense to DMT1, to decrease DMT1 presence, you get a decrease in not only Fe, but also in Cu.
8:45 - Brian pines for a marker (oops, I forgot to grab those). He starts to explain that DMT1 may be another player in not only Cu but also in moving DDP (we know there are other transporters b/c CTR1 -/- still move DDP). Seems that DMT1 is expressed on the cell surface and also in the exosomes.
8:46 - There may be competition between CTR2 and DMT1 in the fight to accumulate DDP and Cu. First plan of attack is to run and SRB or two to get a baseline to see if there is increased accumulation. Then maybe do some uptake studies.
8:47 - That's it! Wow that was SHORT! Nice job, Brian.


**Note this happened on the 17th of June- I just finally got it posted.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Stuck on a bus - part 1

So, awhile back Lish and I decided to both start taking the UCSD free shuttle they offer from the Hillcrest hospital up to the main campus (La Jolla)(I alone used to ride the shuttle and Lish drove), and usually we have good luck with the occasional problem of a stupid driver. Problem is the new batch of drivers just started for the year... Survey says: they suck! We have more break downs and missed buses as a result of the change than I can even begin to describe. The major offender is evidenced in the title of this blog. Yup 7 am and I'm on the side of the 5 north waiting to be picked up. Ain't nothing better! In fact I'm not sure there exists a better way to start your day. It is the ultimate commuter wake up. So I guess the question is why do voluntarily we keep taking the shuttle? Well see its free, and that means all the more money for investing and less wear and tear on Blue Steel. But the trade off is that for every 50 good rides you get an average of 1 bad one. So that brings is back full circle to the title: stuck on the bus. Really I don't think I'd mind if the driver was cool about it-but he's not. In fact quite the opposite from the way he's going on you'd think it was OUR FAULT his bus broke down.
This brings me to the other point I ran to get on the bus this morning- no not because I was late but because he left 5 minutes early (verified by people I know that missed said bus). Worse: I ended up running, having to stand on the bus, and then in the end I still had to get picked up by the bus I could have been sitting on peacefully had I not been in such a hurry to get to work! WHY OH WHY do you leave early (not even consistently early where I can count on it)!?!
Anyway- moral of the story is this: I'm stuck on the bus AND to top it off in 2 weeks I'll be stuck again (only this time it's 30 hours not 30 minutes)!
Chris

A whole new blogging frontier

Why on earth would I want to do this? What on Earth is THIS!?! This my friends is one more effort to really try to be a better blogger, this is mobile blog. Yeah so I've known about this for over a year but have never used it- guess I'll try it. After all, I have about an hour an change every day on the bus - rather than just read I guess I could take the time to post up a few blogs. We'll see!

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Neglect, Self-Respect, and a second thought on Wall-E

Yes we're neglectful- there's a reason we don't have kids- mostly I would probably be the dad that forgot to pick the kids up or drop the kids off, or some random combination thereof- heck if I can't keep up with a blog how can I keep up with other things that don't just live at a certain URL. That aside, I feel like I want to address Wall-E first. See I finally put my finger on it: They just kinda took half a movie and stretched it out to let us believe they had a whole story. Now I know there are a lot of people who are all up in arms about the fact that it seems to be making this large statement about enviromentalism/capitalism/Americanism- my thoughts- fine, whatever, I don't care if you have an agenda to push- by all means push it- just don't forget to entertain me while you're doing it. That's just it- the story took the super easy way out. They didn't bother filling in plot holes, they didn't explain many of the aspects that we see, heck they even contradict themsleves during the movie! That's the reason I feel cheated. Yeah, the funny part is that this movie was conceived years ago (same time Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and several others were discussed) so do I feel that they were setting out to make a social commentary? No. Am I bothered by the political issues presented? No. The opinion of one group is just that, the opinion of them. To be upset by it would be to contradict everything that I have been taught at home, and in the church. I'm sure many who read this blog agree with what they present, and I am not an anti-enviromentalist by any stretch of the imagination (sorry to break it you but I also don't think that pollution is gonna end the world- maybe spiritual pollution but that's a whole other ball of wax); no, I'm bothered because they just didn't bother to develop a complete story, instead they kinda take the easy way out, and then just end the movie. Ehhh. Not on the same scale as something as great as Toy Story or, for me especially, The Incredibles. I feel that maybe there's a reason this was the last of those movies discussed at that fateful luncheon to be developed- maybe they just didn't have the complete story, and knowing how good they are (were?) they figured, "Hey, we can still do this!" Maybe I'm wrong- I hope I'm not- because I would hate to see the end of the Pixar reign of nothing but quality come to a close. But see here's the thing: Alicia and I saw the first standees and teasers for this a year or two ago at Disneyland and even then I was apprehensive, as was she. Seems my spidey sense for movies hasn't completely left me after 9 years of being movie theater-free. I'm also optimistic because of the short at the beginning- in my honset opinion it was THE BEST short Pixar has ever done. It felt complete, like a whole story, and not just a single joke or a tech demo. So maybe that is a sign of good things still to come. I sure hope so.
Wow- that took a lot longer than it should have. So on a different front... we're hoping to have some pictures posted in the next few days of random San Diego, so that'll be nice I suppose.
I've been surfing a lot- I plan on doing a post on that in the near future about new additions/subtractions from the surf catalog. Until then...

Chris