Sunday morning

Actually, it's already afternoon. How time flies when you're trying to relax! I was working until after midnight last night so I still have a little time before I have to go into the lab (so my cells don't overgrow). One good thing about even E. coli is that it takes ~12 hours to get good colonies for screening. With yeast, you get ~2 days off after doing a transformation (that is, if there weren't always a million other things to do). I actually had to start over on some of my constructs after doing 2-3 cloning steps because the plasmids were not mapping correctly and it was difficult to determine exactly where things went wrong. Sux! Hopefully I will have things sorted out before I leave for the Arnold on Thursday night! I am looking forward to getting out of town for a couple of days and visiting with Holly (Geersen) and some other friends.

I've had a good, productive weekend thusfar. Friday night I met my alleged boyfriend for dinner then went out dancing in LA by myself again. I seem to attract the worst dancers in the place and I refuse to believe it's me (who can't dance). Some guys are just very hard, if not impossible, to follow; or maybe it's just different styles, I don't know. I swear, one guy nearly broke my arm--he would grab my wrists behind my back and try to spin me around. I was just cracking up the whole time I was dancing with him (b/c you know he was smaller than me). Anyway, I still had a good time and hopefully dancing with more people will help me to improve. Then I went downstairs for some hip-hop dancing. I guess it's been a while since I've gone to clubs, but I thought guys would have outgrown the "bumping and grinding" type of dancing by the time they hit ~25. But sadly, no, many guys still dance like horny teenagers well into their 30's. I enjoy shaking my ass as much as anyone but it made me a little uncomfortable, especially with guys I didn't even know. It was about time for me to go home at that point anyway.

Yesterday was filled with joyous labwork and a grueling back workout. I didn't get a chance to go grocery shopping and cook and do laundry until late so I found myself going back and forth between my apt. and the lab trying to get everything done. But at least I don't have to do all of that today. OK, I should probably get started today. I did my cardio this morning and hopefully will get back for a "light" leg workout later. I don't know, I do feel like I've been overtraining a little and everything is starting to hurt. So, maybe I will actually take a day off and not be so stubborn. We'll see!

Oh yes, and congrats to all the competitors, particularly the fbb's and Heather Policky, on a great showing in Sacramento yesterday! I wish I could have gone but it's just a little too far to drive and too much trouble to fly. I look forward to seeing everyone at the Arnold next weekend!

REAL metabolic engineering

So as I have said before, I am in the field of metabolic engineering. Well, when I first heard this term as an undergrad, I immediately thought of engineering human metabolism which of course interested me as a bodybuilder. Unfortunately, the scope of my work thusfar has been limited to E. coli and yeast. However, I went to a seminar yesterday where James Laio (from UCLA) discussed some exciting work he was doing both in bateria and moving towards higher organisms.

I was impressed by his production of lycopene and butanol (and its derivatives) in E. coli, but what really caught my attention was what they were doing to the alter the metabolism of hepatic (liver) cells. These cells normally do not metabolize fatty acids in the presence of glucose which is the basis for much of the success of low/no carb diets and many other dieting/training strategies. An intermediate in glycolysis (CIT) inhibits the enzyme involved in transport of fatty acids into the mitochondria where they are oxidized. The idea is to engineer a shunt pathway to keep CIT levels low and allow fatty acids to be metabolized. Such pathways exist in other organisms (as I learned many years ago in biochem) to produce malate/malic acid. So when these enzymes are cloned into hepatic cells, they observe an increase in fatty acid oxidation in the presence of glucose. Very cool indeed. Of course, this all depends on the efficacy of gene delivery/gene therapy which is still a few years away (I believe). But this is yet another application of such technologies for the treatment of obesity. But like most exciting gene therapies, who wouldn't want something like this (provided the side effects were minimal)?! I know a lot of bodybuilders who would love to express these enzymes (and of course a few others to increase growth hormone and testosterone production). The possibilities are a little alarming yet exciting at the same time. Fortunately, most efforts are focused on using gene therapy to cure cancer and other debilitating diseases.

President's day

Tomorrow is a holiday but I will definitely be working. I'm just now getting around to doing my laundry and a little cooking for the week. This weekend was the Ironman Pro here in Pasadena so I have been busy, busy, busy trying to catch the show and expo and put in my time at the lab and gym.

Steph and I went to the press conference/weigh in on Friday although not nearly as many clothes came off as I had promised her! I think Lonnie is a little embarrassed asking guys to drop their pants--maybe next year I can co-host. That night, I wanted to go out salsa dancing again but I had to forgo that in favor of labwork and training. I went to prejudging and the expo on saturday morning with a friend then back and forth to the lab and gym then back for the finals. Then I just went out with a few friends and played darts (which I normally kick ass at?!) in old town pasadena instead of going to the official afterparty. One comment about the show--I am in love with Toney Freeman. Seriously, he is beautiful and I have thought so the past couple of years (not just jumping on the bandwagon). There were a lot of good guys in the show and many didn't get the call-outs they deserve. I was impressed by Hidetada Yamagishi and Sergey Shelestov--I just like that hard, crisp look that goes beyond just being lean.

I ended up doing a lot more labwork than I had anticipated today but that's ok. I think I made some progress. The problem is there are so many sequential cloning steps for the undergrad lab and you have to really keep things like that moving. I already have so many constructs I can't keep up with them all. I'm going to have to start writing these things down.

I think I had a lot more to say but I'm getting pretty tired. I haven't posted a pic in a while so I'll leave you with one from a CD I just got from Mike Eckstutt from HerMuscles. I was telling him how I used to dance and the next thing I knew, I was doing pirouettes and leaps on the boardwalk!

S.A.D.

Happy Single's Awareness Day (or Valentine's Day depending on your relationship status). The sad thing is that I kinda have an S.O. but he is pretty lame so I'm planning to go out dancing and am really looking forward to it.
I'm kinda getting my lab mojo back--meeting with my advisor got me motivated again because of all the different things we can do with my project. At least we can make it sound important when we write up the paper. There really are a lot of pharmacalogically active molecules you can make with the basic backbone of my pathway. Plus I'm focusing on the cloning for the course while my instrument's down so it's a pretty laidback week with some down time to read/think.
The Ironman is this weekend so I'm looking forward to that. I'm going to try to round up my labmates to go to the press conference/expo on Friday and then Steph and I are going to the finals on Saturday night. I'll probably check out prejudging too--I'm still such a fan :P Too bad there's no female bodybuilding (only amateur figure--blah). Time to make my eggs and go to bed. I'm trying to get back into my early morning routine but it's sooo hard. I still wake up and do cardio but it's not exactly at 6am anymore.

cutting a rug!

So I've mentioned my wednesday night salsa classes at caltech, and well, I've found that this is something I really enjoy. I took dance lessons as a kid and have always been tempted to pick it up again and this is a great way to do that. Last night, the instructors were hosting a salsa group at a night club in downtown LA, and I decided to be brave and go--even though I was by myself and knew no one there. They had a class which is a great way to meet people because you dance with everyone. The only problem is that this was meant for absolute beginners, so the guys that took the class didn't really dance much the rest of the night. And then most of the guys who came later were really good (too good for me). But I did get a chance to practice at least a few dances. I have a feeling that once I show my face a little more, I will get asked to dance more frequently since most people seemed to know each other already. I'm definitely going to the valentine's party next week which should have more people from the caltech class since it's in place of our normal wednesday night lesson.
That's really about all the news. I'm actually NOT working much (if at all) this weekend because my DNA didn't come in on friday like it was supposed to. It was just cloning for the undergrad course which I'm not too excited about anyway. I'm just going to train and drop of Ironman flyers at a couple of other gyms, and maybe go shopping. I need a dress to wear that doesn't make me feel like a transvestite! (So admittedly it was hard for me to find something comfortable to wear last night--I can fit into stuff I bought before I went to miami but it just has a different look when I weigh 160 v. 140 lbs.) Sigh.

Hump day

Sigh, it has been nonstop since my uneventful weekend--can't believe it's only wednesday. I'm frustrated yet again over instrument problems. Everything appeared to be fixed and then for the past two days, I've been unable to get a good MS signal. I'm really optimistic that some of my samples will show positive results which makes it that much worse! Gotta keep my head up though.

This does give me some time to design/do the cloning for the undergraduate lab which I've been procrastinating on. Hopefully I have all my own cloning done for a few days and will just be growing/analyzing the yeast strains that I have.

I took the day off from the gym (except for my morning cardio to get me going) and have salsa class to look forward to tonight! It can be a cardio workout in itself sometimes. I also want to try tango and hip-hop in the future.

I'm guessing some of you have heard about the Dr. Keith Ablow show featuring female bodybuilders. They are taping it next week in NY. I was asked to appear (along with a host of other girls) but had to decline. It's a shame because it could be a great opportunity to show that female bodybuilders are intelligent, feminine, loving mothers/wives, and lead otherwise "normal" lives. On top of that, we possess a rare level of dedication and discipline, enduring workouts and diets that most people cannot even imagine. My fear is that it will cast the sport in a negative light as is so often the case with mainstream media. The fact that he is a psychologist leads me to believe they are looking for something that is "wrong" with us that makes us want to look the way we do. Our life experiences collectively shape our definition of beauty and what becomes our physical ideal, whatever that may be. I, personally, like the look of a muscular physique and think it is very feminine--I have shape to my body that is not straight up and down. But more than that, I love the hard work that goes into it. I get such a rush every time I have a great workout. And I get a tremendous sense of satisfaction knowing I can follow a strict diet (and do endless hours of cardio) and see dramatic changes in my body as a result. That being said, I do sincerely hope that they find positive representatives of the sport and provide a fair and open forum to tell their stories. But I was not willing to bet on that in exchange for 15 minutes of fame.

Why?!

I can't figure out why I insist on doing so much labwork on Sundays! I've established that I hate it and am miserable the entire time I'm here and usually it doesn't pay off in the end. So why am I here running LC-MS, doing a western blot, and cloning--all of the things that I hate the most?!
The good news is that the instrument I normally use is up and running again so I finally started collecting data from all my backlogged samples. But it looks like my growth conditions were not optimized so I am repeating most of them anyway. At least now I know SOMETHING and can start moving forward. We did also put in the order for my very own instrument last week but it will be another ~3 weeks or so before that is installed and operational.
Travis just came in and said, "I love this place--I love it!" with extremely heavy sarcasm. Yesterday I looked at him and said, "I'm just so happy to be here." lol--at least we can joke about it and at least I'm not alone in my sentiments.
I've also got a slight case of the sniffles so I'm hoping to fight off a full blown cold. I held off training this morning but definitely want to get my second leg workout in for the week. I will go during the superbowl so hopefully the gym will be less crowded. I must be becoming a hermit! That's also why I prefer to work more on the weekends, because fewer people are around. A lot of that has to do with the great divide in the lab and the differences in maturity/naivete. Those of us that have been around longer are more weathered and cynical. Sad, but true. I better check my gel. Hope everyone has a more exciting weekend than me!