Sports and Pictures

Basically I'm going to be working with a postdoc in the lab on the evolutionary origins of acetylation. He has a theory on how this regulatory mechanism came to be and we're interested in seeing whether acetylation sites in a protein called FOXO have different effects on a given protein. In other words, do all acetylation sites contribute equally to regulation or does one in particular matter more? Hopefully my rotation project will lay some of the foundations for answering this and other questions.

Classes are also starting to really get underway. We have our first problem set for the macromolecules course and yesterday we all met to discuss how to solve the stickier problems (more or less all of them). We got our first paper to review for the frontiers course as well. Frontiers is a course held by the genetics, developmental biology and biochemistry departments that basically reviews a paper from the current literature by that week's seminar speaker. We read the paper then on Tuesdays at 5:00 we review it as a group. On Wednesday the author of the paper gives a talk at Stanford and afterwards joins the students in frontiers for a separate question and answer session. We can then ask them about pretty much anything we'd like. How did they get into research? What does figure 4 in the paper we just read mean? Is there a flaw in their assumptions? How do you write a grant to get money for what you actually want to do as opposed to what institutions will fund? That kind of stuff. Trouble is the paper for this week was really dense genetics. Especially considering that I've never taken a genetics course in my life, a deficiency I hope to address at some point in the near future. Even the professor had a little bit of trouble making sense of it. Nevertheless once we got to the meat of the paper it was really quite interesting to get some exposure to the rather new kind of whole-genome genetic analysis it described.

It's not all classes and rotations here though, the biochemistry department graduate students have started a co-ed intramural flag football team. We practice once or twice a week and I feel we're getting pretty good, which is great. Unfortunately there have been some casualties of the game. Eric, a 3rd year in the Pfeffer lab, has torn or twisted or otherwise damaged the tendons in his pinkie finger pretty badly. Two practices ago, I also became a victim of football practice. I tried to catch a throw that was coming in low to the ground, but it was dark so my hand wasn't in the right place. The ball jammed into my right middle finger pretty badly. A few doctor's appointments and a set of Xrays later and my finger is now in a cast. I also have an appointment with a hand specialist next Monday to tell me whether or not I've actually chipped a bone in one of the joints. I may not be playing in the next couple of weeks. We'll see; hopefully it heals by the time we actually start playing games. It's still a little bit swollen and I can't fully curl the finger without it hurting. I think it's getting better though. Hopefully anyway.

But I don't need a finger to go biking. This past Saturday I took the nice bike out for its first intentional long distance ride since I got here. I say intentional because earlier I locked my keys in the car after getting my bike looked at. Luckily the bike was out of the car, so I had a way to get back to Stanford from Mountain View to get a set of spare keys (Escondido Village staff loaned me a key to get into my apartment). Total distance: 9.2 miles. Saturday though, that was intentional. I went for 15.4 miles up Page Mill road, which is actually fairly uphill for most of the ride traveling away from my apartment. The way back was much nicer. Now 15.4 miles isn't actually long distance by the standards of people who bike this way fairly regularly, but I'll get to some longer trips eventually.

I end here with some pictures I've picked up in the past couple of days. I'm trying to get better at remembering to take pictures, next entry I'll try to have some from the Biochemistry retreat. Tomorrow we leave for Lake Tahoe where Stanford has a kind of conference center. We'll stay there three days courtesy of the department. It's going to be really beautiful. During the day though, we'll be attending department talks and poster sessions. So on top of being nice place, we're going to get a thorough introduction to the state of research in all the labs in the department. It's going to be an intense, informative weekend.

First cloudy day since I've been here, from the outside of my building. My kitchen seen from the living room. My living room seen from the kitchen. My desk is really big, which I like. My bedroom seen from behind my desk. The meal I made to console myself at my damaged finger. Gnocchi, perhaps my favorite pasta.