Hello again. As the sun streams in my window, and the colourful leaves are glowing, I feel inspired to put out another little update on things…
People:
My summer student did a great job and we now have analyzed dendritic spine densities from uninfected slices kept alive for as long as 53 days. He is preparing a poster for the Faculty of Med & Dent summer student research day in October.
Now I have a 499 student who I just threw a bunch of information at and we’ll see how she fairs. Time to start making protein fibrils!
Two post-docs are “almost” hired. I just don’t know how soon they can start, what with all the VISA requirements. The hope is for January?
Experiments:
We have repeatedly succeeded in infecting our slice cultures, and are now trying to figure out the best way to image Purkinje Cells without having to fix the slices. Our latest attempts have been with dyes and gene gunning, with partial success, but I’m not satisfied yet...
Grants:
My CFI grant is in budget finalization, meaning I put out a bunch of requests for expensive pieces of equipment and was rewarded with two large boxes full of quotes from contenders! This is not an environmentally friendly way to do this, as vendors feel the need to put big glossy portfolios together – some of which have each individual page laminated, and there are three copies of every quote. Anyway, the first goal is to purchase a confocal scope, and that order may even go out later this week. :)
The Centre:
We are ever hopeful of getting the main level containment lab up and running “soon”. The CFIA inspection went well, so we thought we were set. Then we were told that the NMR machine needed a HUGE hole in the perimeter wall in order to vent helium. (Either that or users would all be talking like Donald Duck). But, that might actually happen soon, and then, in theory, we could actually “go live” for infectious prion work in a matter of weeks. It’s about time, as our tiny tissue culture suite in containment is about maxed out in terms of personnel…
Vacation:
BIG NEWS! I took my first real vacation since starting here in January, 2009. After doing a LOT of weeks of call over the summer (and having my bike stolen from outside my building!), I finally snapped and decided to take a break. My husband and I went to Peru for 2 weeks at the beginning of September, and it was such a wonderful trip and change of pace. And you know what? Nothing disastrous happened while I was gone! I hope to do this vacation thing more regularly. Afterall, in theory I get 4 weeks per year…
Other:
I joined another musical group – Concordia Symphony, in addition to the TEMPO group. So, that plus curling, which is about to start, will occupy three of my evenings per week. I hope that is enough “other” to keep me sane in the coming year. We’ll see how long it takes me to touch base again…
Monday, September 27, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
June 1, 2010
June already, eh? Sigh. Definitely time for an update.
People:
I had two high school students in the lab for a few months, a couple days a week after school, as part of a Sanofi Bioaventis Challenge. They had hoped to solve the problem of early diagnosis in prion disease in their time here, but I had to convince them that that was a bit out of reach for their short project. Instead we looked at toxicity of prion peptides on cell culture. At least, that was the plan… At least they learned a bunch of techniques and in the process we got Western blotting working in my lab.
I also have a great summer student. It appears that in order to work in my lab, at least so far, your name must begin with J… So J and J are busily getting things done. Now if only I could find a good post-doc candidate. That is proving to be harder than I thought…
Experiments:
We have lots of slice cultures growing, and are trying to infect them now. The first 5 week infection experiment didn’t work, and we found out that a certain someone who gave us the infected source sample gave us one without any infectivity in it! You know who you are… Anyway, we now trust no one and have confirmed there is abnormal prion protein in the latest batch so hopefully we’ll have some infected slices after 5 weeks or so. Our own mice are on site now too, so that helps a lot. Now we are playing around with gene gunning our slices (yes, we shoot DNA or dye-coated beads at our slices!).
Grants:
My biggest news is that I got my Alberta Heritage Grant! It was a bit of a long shot, but I am really happy. That guarantees I have salary support for 7 years, and gives me some operating funds for 3 years. I didn’t get the PrioNet recruitment grant despite all that work, primarily because it overlapped too much with the Heritage Grant. Go figure. I am learning that navigating the nuances of different granting agencies is not as straightforward as I thought. Oh, and my other grant in the works is the infrastructure CFI grant. That was supposed to be reviewed in April and announced in May, but they had so many applications that the put off reviewing some of them (mine included) until June! So I am still waiting to hear about that so I can buy some of my more expensive pieces of equipment… We also didn’t get the NSERC grant we wanted as a Centre, but have just resubmitted, so we’ll see if we have more luck this time. My next big grant will be the dreaded CIHR grant next spring…
Travel:
I went to the American Academy of Neurology meeting in Toronto – the first time since I was a resident. It is more enjoyable when you don’t have an exam looming over you.
Other:
I wound up leading a Meet-a-Mentor initiative at the University, as part of WISEST. We did 4 teleconferences to rural junior high schools over lunch hours, doing some science and engineering labs with them. From jelly beans to volcanoes to turkey basters, it was a lot of fun (and work!). All in the name of inspiring kids to go into science or engineering…
One last tidbit – that WISEST talk I gave last summer? Well, the students enjoyed it so invited me to be their keynote speaker at their graduation last week. It was quite an experience – and a flashback to high school band renditions of Pomp and Circumstance. Anyway, my two take-home messages were “Be happy” and “Follow your passions”. I hope I can live up to that too…
People:
I had two high school students in the lab for a few months, a couple days a week after school, as part of a Sanofi Bioaventis Challenge. They had hoped to solve the problem of early diagnosis in prion disease in their time here, but I had to convince them that that was a bit out of reach for their short project. Instead we looked at toxicity of prion peptides on cell culture. At least, that was the plan… At least they learned a bunch of techniques and in the process we got Western blotting working in my lab.
I also have a great summer student. It appears that in order to work in my lab, at least so far, your name must begin with J… So J and J are busily getting things done. Now if only I could find a good post-doc candidate. That is proving to be harder than I thought…
Experiments:
We have lots of slice cultures growing, and are trying to infect them now. The first 5 week infection experiment didn’t work, and we found out that a certain someone who gave us the infected source sample gave us one without any infectivity in it! You know who you are… Anyway, we now trust no one and have confirmed there is abnormal prion protein in the latest batch so hopefully we’ll have some infected slices after 5 weeks or so. Our own mice are on site now too, so that helps a lot. Now we are playing around with gene gunning our slices (yes, we shoot DNA or dye-coated beads at our slices!).
Grants:
My biggest news is that I got my Alberta Heritage Grant! It was a bit of a long shot, but I am really happy. That guarantees I have salary support for 7 years, and gives me some operating funds for 3 years. I didn’t get the PrioNet recruitment grant despite all that work, primarily because it overlapped too much with the Heritage Grant. Go figure. I am learning that navigating the nuances of different granting agencies is not as straightforward as I thought. Oh, and my other grant in the works is the infrastructure CFI grant. That was supposed to be reviewed in April and announced in May, but they had so many applications that the put off reviewing some of them (mine included) until June! So I am still waiting to hear about that so I can buy some of my more expensive pieces of equipment… We also didn’t get the NSERC grant we wanted as a Centre, but have just resubmitted, so we’ll see if we have more luck this time. My next big grant will be the dreaded CIHR grant next spring…
Travel:
I went to the American Academy of Neurology meeting in Toronto – the first time since I was a resident. It is more enjoyable when you don’t have an exam looming over you.
Other:
I wound up leading a Meet-a-Mentor initiative at the University, as part of WISEST. We did 4 teleconferences to rural junior high schools over lunch hours, doing some science and engineering labs with them. From jelly beans to volcanoes to turkey basters, it was a lot of fun (and work!). All in the name of inspiring kids to go into science or engineering…
One last tidbit – that WISEST talk I gave last summer? Well, the students enjoyed it so invited me to be their keynote speaker at their graduation last week. It was quite an experience – and a flashback to high school band renditions of Pomp and Circumstance. Anyway, my two take-home messages were “Be happy” and “Follow your passions”. I hope I can live up to that too…
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Jan 12, 2010
Happy New Year!
Where have I been you ask? Well, after my last entry, we successfully started preparing brain slice cultures, and even imaged some on a confocal microscope. This was really a miracle of circumstance, as a colleague happened to have extra mice pups delivered unexpectedly, which would be sacrificed without purpose unless we needed them. They were to be the appropriate age within a week of my lab tech (who I will call J for the purposes of this blog) starting, and we had nothing set up yet, let alone all the reagents required for the experiment. But, somehow J managed to pull everything together and we were actually slicing by early the following week. Then, it turned out we were having a demo for confocal scopes in our building, so we were actually able to bring our freshly prepared slices and look at them on confocal - all within 1.5 weeks of J starting at the lab! Since then we had fortune to have another batch of mice prior to Xmas and made better cultures on this second round. Unfortunately, the cultures still died, but we think we are using too much media on top of the slices and impairing oxygen diffusion. Soon we should have our own mice so we are less dependent on others for sources.
After a week of call at the end of November, I had some "fun" submitting my PrioNet recruitment grant. There was a lot of last minute confusion regarding who had to sign what, and on the day everything was to be couriered to the agency, the final office at U of A, which was supposed to sign off, told me they had received the grant but because there was no sticky note on it saying urgent, they didn't take it seriously... I will refrain from articulating my exact response to this, but let us just say it was the straw that broke the camel's back (my back). The good news is that the agency allowed an extra day for things to get sent. The bad news is that my sanity was damaged for a while... In the future I will invest heavily in sticky notes to ensure communication happens. See? Even within the "science machine" communication breaks down! "A sticky note, a sticky note, my kingdom for a sticky note!"
But, I had a great break for 7 days over Xmas, including some skiing and relaxing in Banff with my husband. After catching up on sleep and sanity, it was back on call on the 31st through to the 7th. So much for sleep catch-up; the last three days straight were very busy. The next day we had a huge NSERC funding agency visit, where we had to demonstrate the quality of the Prion Centre and convince them of our need for funding as a national resource. It was a long day, and I drank a lot of coffee, but it went relatively well. We won't know the results for a while though. In the mean time, the push is on to get the containment part of the Centre up and running - which is currently caught up in paperwork delays...
Anyway, I really should write up this neurology clinical skills test station, prepare my year-end PrioNet report (even though it has only been 9 months since funding was given!) and review this article by the end of the week.
Oh - one more piece of good news. I had my year end evaluation with the Chair of Medicine, and it sounds like they are going to keep me - for the time being at least... ;)
Where have I been you ask? Well, after my last entry, we successfully started preparing brain slice cultures, and even imaged some on a confocal microscope. This was really a miracle of circumstance, as a colleague happened to have extra mice pups delivered unexpectedly, which would be sacrificed without purpose unless we needed them. They were to be the appropriate age within a week of my lab tech (who I will call J for the purposes of this blog) starting, and we had nothing set up yet, let alone all the reagents required for the experiment. But, somehow J managed to pull everything together and we were actually slicing by early the following week. Then, it turned out we were having a demo for confocal scopes in our building, so we were actually able to bring our freshly prepared slices and look at them on confocal - all within 1.5 weeks of J starting at the lab! Since then we had fortune to have another batch of mice prior to Xmas and made better cultures on this second round. Unfortunately, the cultures still died, but we think we are using too much media on top of the slices and impairing oxygen diffusion. Soon we should have our own mice so we are less dependent on others for sources.
After a week of call at the end of November, I had some "fun" submitting my PrioNet recruitment grant. There was a lot of last minute confusion regarding who had to sign what, and on the day everything was to be couriered to the agency, the final office at U of A, which was supposed to sign off, told me they had received the grant but because there was no sticky note on it saying urgent, they didn't take it seriously... I will refrain from articulating my exact response to this, but let us just say it was the straw that broke the camel's back (my back). The good news is that the agency allowed an extra day for things to get sent. The bad news is that my sanity was damaged for a while... In the future I will invest heavily in sticky notes to ensure communication happens. See? Even within the "science machine" communication breaks down! "A sticky note, a sticky note, my kingdom for a sticky note!"
But, I had a great break for 7 days over Xmas, including some skiing and relaxing in Banff with my husband. After catching up on sleep and sanity, it was back on call on the 31st through to the 7th. So much for sleep catch-up; the last three days straight were very busy. The next day we had a huge NSERC funding agency visit, where we had to demonstrate the quality of the Prion Centre and convince them of our need for funding as a national resource. It was a long day, and I drank a lot of coffee, but it went relatively well. We won't know the results for a while though. In the mean time, the push is on to get the containment part of the Centre up and running - which is currently caught up in paperwork delays...
Anyway, I really should write up this neurology clinical skills test station, prepare my year-end PrioNet report (even though it has only been 9 months since funding was given!) and review this article by the end of the week.
Oh - one more piece of good news. I had my year end evaluation with the Chair of Medicine, and it sounds like they are going to keep me - for the time being at least... ;)
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