down time

  I wasn't sure whether I'd be working in San Diego at Scripps, in Palo Alto at PARC, or in Merced next week.  All have their advantages.  At Scripps is an instrument I need to use, in Palo Alto is another instrument I need to use, and in Merced is my own bed which I have been missing.  

It's always horrible when experiments give a scientist ambiguous results, but sometimes the results of the ambiguity are really nice.  I have ambiguous results which means that experiments are put on pause to design some more and different experiments to shed some light on the confusion.  The result of that is that I get to spend at least a few days here in Merced.  I have 1 technician who needs some help with her own strange results, 2 manuscripts to revise, and 3 undergrads who need some attention.  I am also very tired as I have gone for days without much sleep.  It is good to be back in Merced for a while.

So I am sitting here hoping I don't die

A bunch of grad students invited me to go pick blueberries with them during a break between sessions.  They offered me a berry to show me how good they are.  After I ate it they said "Oh ya and Tony ate one about 10 minutes ago and he's still alive so you'll probably be okay." Then they reassured me that they were absolutely certain that those were blueberries, they just hadn't tried them yet.  At that point, it seemed like the best plan was to go berry picking and have some fun whether I was on the way out or not.  I am still not dead so it will probably work out okay.  If none of us are dead by tomorrow, the plan is to eat them over cereal for breakfast.  Yum.   I am posting pictures of the people who are either now assassins  or new friends.

 Xiao Ye (he's the one who gave me the berries) and Martine Ehringer

And William Ratcliff

Science Summer Camp

These are some photos of the beautiful New Hampshire backwoods where I am staying.  

Two years ago, I found a wild Orchid.  This isn't quite as good, but I still like it a lot.

Gordon Conference

Well, I am in the backwoods of New Hampshire at what my mom calls "Science summer camp"  which is a pretty accurate description.   The shared showers, thin twin beds, and wood paneled walls with green trim add to the ambiance.  I may be advancing through the ranks of the Gordon Conference.  I got a private room this year.  It is still in the same dorm as the graduate students, but at least I don't have to share a room with anyone this time.  The housing is arranged by age, but maybe rank is considered as well.

Many of my friends are here.  Merijn Salverda, Pilar Francino, Dan Weinreich and Tony Dean are all here and it's good to see them.  I have also run into many people I have become acquainted with, but don't see that regularly.  After getting out of one of the sessions, one such acquaintance said to me "Most of those talks were spun off of experimental evolution work you've done, weren't they?"   Even small acknowledgements are encouraging.

I am often told that I am an iconoclast because I publish science as it is.  I don't worry a lot about the paradigms that others adhere to if they don't apply to my work.  This approach makes science more fun and exciting, but also puts me so far outside the mainstream sometimes, that it takes about 10 years for others to accept those iconoclastic ideas, and by that time, they have forgotten who came up with them.   Sometimes I want a poster of myself entitled "The Iconoclaster". I would have muscles bulging through a labcoat and pipettemen in holsters at my hips.  Maybe it would scare people into remembering who came up with what.  (Okay fine, it probably wouldn't, but it would be fun anyway.)

Tomorrow we are having a semi-spontaneous sub-conference on beta-lactamases.  This should be fun.  I was one of the people who made beta-lactamases a model system for studying evolutionary biology.  Two years ago, the sub-conference included me, Merijn and Dan.  This year, it seems that there might be as many as 10 who want to attend.  Who knows?  Maybe two years from now, we'll get a whole session of the real conference.  (Dream big you know.)

All summer in a day

It has been a while since I have had a day off.  I am working at the Palo Alto Research Center for a while (possibly until mid-August) and we (Michael Recht and I) are scrambling to gather lots of data in a little time.  Consequently, we have been working long days in a cold, loud, windy room doing lots of trouble shooting. We have been fairly successful.  Our troubles are not lying dead in the street, but they seem somewhat subdued for now.  

We have some real data in which we are confident.  Real data are like the drugs that keep scientists hooked to relentless schedules like the one we are working on now.  We sleep, eat, and collect data. I am dead tired, but running off the buzz of really cool data.  However, I have a glorious half hour to sit and do whatever I want because we took some time out this morning to think, which put us off schedule.  If we were to start our experiments right now, we would miss lunch in the cafeteria.  I brought my lunch, but Michael didn't and it's Mexican food day which is pretty good.  Though it would be nice to skip the eating part of our lives right now, that really isn't practical.  I am glad to have a half hour to simple sit.

I realized that I will not be doing anything this next Saturday besides getting ready for the Gordon Research Conference on Microbial Population Genetics which is in New Hampshire next week.  My time prior to this Saturday is completely scheduled, and from the moment my plane touches down in San Francisco upon returning from the conference, my time is scheduled.  (Yes, I will be in the lab at the end of a traveling day which includes taking a shuttle to Boston, a flight from Boston to SFO, and a 2.5 hr car drive back to Merced).  

I am not sure what I will do this Saturday.  My sewer line should be completely replaced by the end of today and I am not sure what my backyard will look like when I return, so maybe I'll put it back together.  I am sure I'll do a couple loads of laundry.  Maybe I will take a nap or read or go for a walk or watch Hmong guys play volleyball with their feet.  All of those sound great right now.

I did forego some sleep last night and went dancing in Palo Alto.  The music was Latin and I taught a couple of guys to Merengue.  It was fun. I noticed that all of the women in this area have long hair that is really shiny with at least a few curls in it.  I showed up with my short (though stylish) hair, blue fingernail polish and a cute shirt depicting a small child about to be eaten by a sea serpent.  I felt like the entire counter culture population present and had a good time regardless.  

You have got to read this article!

This article "Unsung heroes work hard to cut hospital acquired infections" documents great advances in the fight against antibiotic resistance!  My brother Tom, a doctor, just sent it to me.  Very important stuff as antibiotic resistant nosocomial infections kill more people in the US each year than HIV does.  

Hot Stuff!!!!

I just got a cool post on my Facebook Wall from Marnee Chua, the development genius who raises funds for the School of Natural Sciences at UC Merced. She informed me that her homework assignment from her online course through Montana State was to read the article "What Antimicrobial Resistance Has Taught Us About Horizontal Gene Transfer" by Miriam Barlow.  It is a chapter in the book Horizontal Gene Transfer:Genomes in Flux. That is the first time a friend has told me that someone I have never heard  of referred them to my work.  It feels so good to know that someone out there reads and appreciates my work.

New Directions

I have been working on antibiotic resistance for nearly ten years now, and I definitely still love it. It is a great system for studying evolutionary biology and it feeds my morbid sense of humor. However, I find that after a decade, my attention wanders a little and I am venturing out into some new directions.

I am starting to study math a little with a brilliant woman, Kristina Crona. She thinks that antibiotic resistance can teach her something about math. So I explain biology to her to help her with her math problems and then I get her to explain math to me and it turns out that some of my problems are interesting to her. She is so good at explaining math that it seems easy and fun while she is around and it still makes sense after she has left. That's a good mathematician.

I have also started working on a coral reef project with Monica Medina. We are trying to push the evolution the symbionts of coral species to find out whether they can adapt to changing ocean conditions. This is fun science. I am more excited about this project than anything that I have done in the lab for the past year.

I am also starting to work on biofuels. This line of research may be the most challenging because it requires a knowledge of chemistry. I have taken more chemistry classes than biology classes because chemistry is so challenging to me and I am always trying to overcome that deficit. It is good to have a challenge and I think I can work this project out. It may just take a lot of planning before it becomes anything approaching brilliant.