My face looks vaguely like Matthew's in expression, though not hotness quotient

[exsequar]

I just took an almost three hour nap by accident. *blinks at the world* In that time, I got zero emails, and my roommates aren't out in the living room and I don't see evidence of them having made dinner. Also, I'm not hungry even though I didn't have a real lunch and I only ate some Ramen when I got home.

It's like the world stood still (except for the sun setting and all that jazz). I am confused and groggy and dnw.

Luckily, I have Gerard and company as a balm for my soul. Imagining Mikey Way in the backseat while Gee and Bob test drive a Dodge Challenger is maybe the best thing that happened to me today. :D

I lied about the no emails - I got one, from that professor I want to work with (I think I'm supposed to call him Jason already...) in response to my question about what he might like me to work on. This is what he had to say.

My current favorite idea for you is: explore the mechanisms by which small molecule inhibitors of Hsp70 control the fate of tau in cell-based models of Alzheimer's disease. This would involve measuring affinity by a couple of newly developed methods, doing some structure work (NMR), developing in-cell Western blots and running protein re-folding assays. Once you get your schedule worked out, we can discuss these ideas in more detail.

*blinks at that for a while* That's, um. Wow. That's a lot! In only two months to boot! It's deeply exciting (I have not done ANY OF THOSE THINGS before, not even a Western) and exhilarating but also terrifying. It is however pretty much exactly what I want to do, and if all of that is what he'd like me to do in two months, I think it would be so fun to work for him for four years.

I repeat - Wow! O.O

Comments

[exsequar.livejournal.com]

Oh, dude, I've totally done NMR (the paper I'm putting together is the NMR study of our probe), but not on proteins, which is what I was assuming this would be. And that's a completely different beast - there's all kinds of 2D and 3D techniques that I'm only vaguely familiar with!

Congrats on making your molecule! :D

I am really pleased by the language he keeps using because it does seem like I've sort of caught his attention and I am a little puzzled but very pleased, because he is very much my first choice in this program and it would be amazing if that interest was reciprocated. I just hope the rotation goes well! (I'll be working like 50 hour weeks for two months. Gonna be intense! AND AWESOME. If not, that would be a big warning bell I think, heh.)

YAY MONICA I CAN HAS! YOU NEED TO COME TO UM SOON OKAY.

[hebrew-hernia.livejournal.com]

OKAY I was gonna be confused for a minute there. NMR is wicked awesome if kind of a pain in my ass. But yes I learned in biochem that proteins + NMR = kind of ridiculously crazy, and there's a limit to the size you can do because it just gets too crazy. I've done a Western blot and in all honesty it is pretty boring. (I'm not sure what he means by 'intracellular' except maybe lysing cells and just sending entire fractions through the gel?) SCIENCE SCIENCE SCIENCE.

[exsequar.livejournal.com]

Oh this is funny, did you know this? (From Wikipedia) "The method originated from the laboratory of George Stark at Stanford. The name western blot was given to the technique by W. Neal Burnette[4] and is a play on the name Southern blot, a technique for DNA detection developed earlier by Edwin Southern. Detection of RNA is termed northern blotting and the detection of post-translational modification of protein is termed Eastern blotting."

Hee! Occasionally science has a sense of humor!