Back to the Grindstone

Last week was the university's official spring break. As a graduate student this means almost next to nothing. It really means a break from going to classes and the "opportunity" to get quality labwork done. During this week I worked mainly on a protein expression experiment. So what does that involve? Well, all (or almost all) proteins created these days come from using bacterial cells to create a whole lot of your protein. I had previously grown some E. coli cells containing a plasmid (stretch of DNA) that could be "tricked" into creating a whole lot of my protein. While growing the cells, and causing the protein production is relatively quick, separating this one protein from all the cellular material takes a few days.

Also, on Thursday of that week, we (members of our research group) attended an annual "Baltimore Area Repair Symposium." In Baltimore, there are several research facilities that study how organisms repair damaged DNA; Johns Hopkins (our group as well as several at the med school and school of public health), NIH-NIA (National Institute of Health-National Institute of Aging), Univ. of Maryland - Baltimore County, and a few just outside of Baltimore. The day consisted of about 20 researchers giving short, 15 minute summaries of the current research/results they are undertaking. During breaks, peripheral rooms contained posters made by graduate students that further highlighted areas of research. There was a longer, keynote address, by a research from my neck of the woods, Dr. Tom Kunkel, who is based in Research Triangle Park, but has professorships at Duke and UNC. The first part of the day was very interesting, probably because it was much more chemistry-based relavent to my own research. The second half seemed to focus so much on specific, esoteric proteins, that I was bored to death.

My training last week was tapered somewhat. The accidental 16 miler from the previous weekend had taken it out of me, and it was time to recover. Of course, the only real tapering I did was not swim, and not lift. My running mileage was pretty much where it's been. Only thing was that my early morning Saturday running (before heading to Annapolis for Coast Guard training) was extremely difficult, probably ghosts from the previous week.

But this week I'm back in the pool and back in the weight room. I'm planning to play around with my weekend long workouts to help keep things interesting and to help pick up the intensity.

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