Memorial Day

Ugh, I am so not motivated to work today. I had planned on going to Muscle Beach for the bodybuilding competition but decided against it since I have a lot of labwork going and didn't feel like fighting beach traffic. Now I'm wishing I had gone b/c I know it would have been fun and plus I always train at Gold's Venice while I'm there. Oh well, I did make it out to the "Cal" on Saturday for the finals and had a good time. I usually get bored but I saw a lot of people that I haven't seen in a while like Claire O'Connell and Debbie Bramwell, who are just awesome bodybuilders and friends.



There's really not much other news to report. My paper is stuck in the review process (again) but I'm hoping it gets accepted as is..and soon. I am working on a follow-up and of course, it's proving to be more difficult than expected. I'm seeing production of some new metabolites but the yield is very, very low, and since the enzymes haven't been characterized, it's difficult to know where to start troubleshooting. I could do some mutagenesis/codon-optimization/in vitro assays, etc for some things but it's hard to do for 3 at a time (and again with no standards available for these intermediates). I have a feeling that a couple of the enzymes in particular function as part of a larger metabolon complex such that all of the proteins in a given pathway must be expressed for any of the steps to function (and not all of the sequences are available). There are several examples where metabolic engineers have had to go in and do some plant genomics to clone sequences that the needed for a particular application but it takes a team of people and more time than I care to spend. I'm still hoping to defend ~Sept/Oct and be ready to start a career--finally (I know). OK, on that note, I better get back to work!