Science Monkey

Okay. As of this morning, I am officially over the wildfire smoke. I’m done with it. Finis. Kaput. Now will it please go away? My bike rides home have left me gasping for air more lately than ever, which is saying something. So no more smoke? KTHNXBAI.

As I mentioned earlier, my sister graduated from college this weekend. Both of my aunts and uncles came to town and it was nice seeing them again. I think the last time I saw them was Grandma Heggestad’s 90th birthday, but I can’t remember if that was before or after Blake and Donna’s wedding…I seem not to have taken my camera to that, so it’s harder to date. Before, I think, so I saw them at the wedding most recently. At any rate, that was several years ago.

You know what I’m not good at? Explaining what I do. Um…molecular biology? Oh, more specific than that. It’s called genomic imprinting. *eyesglazeover* Sigh. That probably means I don’t really understand what I’m doing well enough. At least I’m able to describe Prader-Willi and Angelman Syndromes, then hit them with the “both of these diseases come from the exact same deletion” bit, which I still think is pretty damned cool.

The rest of the weekend went by quickly. Graduation festivities took up most of Sunday, so I really just had Saturday “off.” Emma was on call — poor dear — so I bummed around the house most of the day. I didn’t do a whole lot that was productive, but I did do a little vacuuming, just in case somebody wanted to come by. The house wasn’t clean enough for me to actually *invite* anybody over, but it was clean enough that I wouldn’t be mortified if anybody wanted to. Lauren and her roommates had a party for their families at the folks’ house on Saturday evening which was fun. I had a cool drive home, too. But do you know what I missed? My uncle Jim likes going to Irish bars when he’s traveling (or when he’s home too, I suspect), and I completely forgot! I told him that next time he’s in town we’re taking him to the Shamrock. It probably would’ve been crazy downtown, the Saturday of graduation weekend, but it was a good opportunity missed. One of these days I’ll just jump out of my shell and go by myself, or find someone who wants to go drink a pint or seven of Guinness so I’ll have company. Drinking by myself seems like a bad idea, eh?

Sigh. The water bath is warm, so it’s time to do go my thing. Nice typing to you all, the lurkers who read my ramblings. Maybe I’ll hear something from the rest of you one day, eh? ;-D

As of last Friday, I’ve switched projects. Well, refocused my aim. No…it’s a project switch. I’ve spent approximately the last three years examining the long-range interactions along the entire domain in both human cells and in mouse tissues and have finally accepted that it might take another three to do the job completely and thoroughly. My thesis committee (and I) is dismayed about my apparent lack of concrete progress (ie, no papers) and feel I should be at a point now where there’s a clear end in sight. So, at their urging, I’ve switched to a “safe” project, one which will still be scientifically interesting but is not going to have the technical roadblocks that the whole-domain project does.

The plan now is to characterize the promoter and imprinting status of one gene within the domain, including DNase I hypersensitivity, ChIP, in vivo footprinting, methylation, etc. I’ll have the 3C data as well, but it will be focused on the one gene, rather than the entire domain.

I’m rather bummed about this, naturally. However, I think it’s the wise decision. Switching projects is my choice and I’m committed to the new project, but that doesn’t mean I have to be overly thrilled about having to do it.

The switch does give me a nice end goal, though, which is a pleasant thing to see after so many years in the mire.

I’ve finally finished my presentation for Chromatin. I’ve uploaded it here in case any of you want the slides. The parts of this work that are mine I am releasing under the CreativeCommons-attribution-sharealike-2.5 license. The other parts are copyright their respective owners.

The paper can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng1929.

The presentation can be found at http://www.sciencemonkey.net/work/070125 chromatin jc.ppt.