Obamania, 2004 edition

Apropos of nothing, I just wanted to post this photo for fun.  Back in 2004, when I was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, working on my PhD in physics, I was president of the Graduate Employees' Organization, IFT/AFT local 6300.  Our union represented the approximately 1500 teaching assitants and graduate assistants, but a lot of the benefits we negotiated for (like healthcare improvements) extended to research assistants as well, so we really represented the whole graduate student community.  We had just inked our first contract after 18 very long months of tense negotiations, and celebrated by suing the university for violating the dues collection provisions of the contract (they claimed that their transition to a new payroll system made it impossible for them to actually abide by the contract that they had so recently signed, but a little bit of legal leverage did wonders for their abilities to collect our dues.)

At about that time, a young and energetic state senator had just swept the Democratic primary for US Senate (against one of my father's law partners, no less), and due to a recent scandal involving the Republican candidate and Seven of Nine, was poised to become the junior Senator from Illinois.  The union office got an urgent call from his campaign manager (a guy who I  recall went by "Rocket").  Apparently, the Champaign County Dems needed a university group to reserve the ballroom at the Student Union, because non-student groups couldn't make such reservations, and would we be so kind as to handle it?  I had heard Obama speak a few weeks before, when we were lobbying the state lawmakers in Springfield with the IFT, and he delivered a great address to the group, the details of which I can't remember now.  All I remember was that he seemed electrifying.  I dashed off to the Union and reserved the ballroom, and he showed up, and gave his stump speech to a packed room.

After the event, we gave him a t-shirt, I got to shake his hand, and he posed with us.  If you look closely, you can see my face (with glasses and long hair, ah graduate school!) in the back row, two faces to the right of the now President of the United States. And that, dear children, is the day I met Barack Obama.

Reviews of single molecule protein folding

Two review papers on studying proteni folding by single molecule FRET, in two journals, by two giants, in one month.  What are the odds?  I shall have to add these to my always-growing "to read" pile.

• Uli Neinhaus, Single-molecule fluorescence studies of protein folding
• Bill Eaton, Protein folding studied by single-molecule FRET

Incidentally, I was drawn into the field by the Levinthal paradox (like many biophysicists, I suspect), and I did my undergraduate thesis work in Bob Austin's lab on microfluidic mixers for studying protein folding.  So, the physicist in me always hankers a bit to return to the protein folding problem, even though the field is pretty much saturated, and it's unrelated to my current work.  Bill Eaton always loomed large in my mind, like a demigod almost, because of those formative years, and I sent him an e-mail when I was shopping around for postdocs.  He actually replied and told me that he would love to have somebody with my experience in single molecule fluorescence, but that he didn't have the fundnig at that time.  So, it was a no-go.

On a totally unrelated note: I know everbody is looking for jobs right now, but I have two close friends looking for employment in the private sector.  One is postdoc with a lot of experience in genomics and single molecule fluorescence,  and one soon-to-be-minted PhD studying cancer bio and the cell cycle.  The latter is looking mostly in the bay area, the former is open in terms of location.  Both are people I would highly recommend for their dedication, their patience, and their intellgience.  It's hard out here for a pimp these days, so if you have any interesting leads, feel free to forward them my way, and I will forward them on!

Technique of the Year: Superresolution Microscopy

Nature Methods has selected as their "Method of the Year" superresolution microscopy, encompasing both optical approaches (STED, 4Pi) and labeling methods (PALM, STORM).  I've blogged a lot about superresolution microscopy, its ins and outs, advantages and disadvantages, so I'm glad to see that I've been backing the right horse in terms of impact.

A minor (and very self-absorbed) quibble I will point out: In his review article Microscopy and its focal switch, Stefan Hell cites Norbert Scherer's paper on NALMS, but doesn't cite my paper on SHRImP.  The papers are almost exactly the same and came out in the same issue of PNAS, except that ours appeared first (i.e., it was a lower page number) and was submitted several months before theirs.

Happy New Year!

Hola Amigos, I know it's been a while since I've rapped at ya. I don't really have much of an excuse, since I spent most of the holidays here in the lab and, unlike most of the Block lab, I didn't attend the Single Molecule Biophysics conference at the Aspen center. (For those who are interested, you can see the race results from the conference ski race sorted by best handicapped finish here. Steve, who grew up skiing in the Swiss Alps, placed third.)

As for me, I spent a very frustrating few weeks trying to eliminate RNAse, and I think I found the source, finally, but it was a hair pulling few weeks which left me drained and uninterested in blogging, or doing much of anything else besides consider new career options. Fortunately, due to the miserable state of the economy, my other choices were "soda jerk" and "trust fund brat", so I was forced to continue along my chosen career path, and I'm still here. Bill Scott said to me a couple months ago that a scientist is like a human diode: you go through months, sometimes years of miserable and utter failure, for a few moments of brilliant success (if you get that far), and then it's back to failure. This lifestyle does not mesh with my personality very well, unfortunately, and sometimes I feel like I'm being driven slowly towards insanity. But, it doesn't help when the winter solstice is nigh and the lab is completely empty. With humanity back, spring approaching, and the RNAses at bay (at least for now), I think the worst is over.

In other news, Steve Chu's confirmation hearing was today, and in spite of some unfortunately honest comments about coal that he made back before he was supposed to be playing politics, it sounds like he's going to sail through. (I believe, at my suggestion, he was awarded the "Lamest Excuse for Not Showing Up" award at the Aspen meeting, since he was originally supposed to attend but then cancelled.) It will be nice having an actual scientist in charge over there, but I think the political rhetoric is a bit much. I think cold atom trapping is great and all, but “One of the great, brilliant thinkers of his generation," as Dianne Feinstein put it, is kind of over the top. I will happily entertain comments from those who disagree though.