Announcing: Send Her On Her Way

Owing to the immense success of Pony Nuzzles and Slothy Snuggles, which had a first printing of five copies in two countries, I am undertaking my next non-fiction project.

Send Her on Her Way: Kat's Guide to Camping Properly is currently set to be released July 1st 2009 in .doc format!

What I do At Work, volume 8

Hi!  Greetings from...work.  This week I'm designing primers--little chunks of DNA that seek out and bind to their complimentary sequences in busted up genomic DNA samples--so that I can amplify two genes that are missing from our Complex I subunit set. 

One of those genes hasn't been sequenced in Fundulus or Danio, so I'm making some degenerate primers for identifying it.  Whatcha do with those, is make an alignment of protein sequences from closely related organisms--other fish in this case--and figure out what the possible combinations of nucleotides are for the amino acids in highly conserved regions, and then design a primer from those. 

Most amino acids are coded for by more than one set of nucleotides, so you need more than the typical four letters--A,C,T,G--to describe them.  The degenerate code contains letters that mean things like "any thing but T" or "A and C only".  So, while I was digging around in my protein alignment, I came across this potential primer, which I think may be the best one ever designed:

GAY MGN GAY AGN GAY

Too bad it's so repetitive...

Free Form Book Club

Thanks for everyone who participated in our last meeting of the FFBC.

Here are the results of the discussion:

1. Abortus is gross, so is preserving bodies in honey
2. Anna would like to be under a tree for eternity
3. We're invaluable, maybe.  Gold teeth help.

So...this week I'm reading Continental Drift by Russell Banks.  It's pretty good, you know for a book about typical American life in the 80's that was written by a Brit.  Any one else read it?

H1N1 and You

I'm taking the H1N1 flu seriously. It's probably only because I like post-apocalyptic movies, or maps that include markers for Death. No, no, it's not that. It's really because I love stocking up on canned food and having an excuse not to go to work. Hurricanes, snow days, pandemic disease. You name it...I'm on it.

You may know that WAGGGS, that's the World Assocciation for Girl Guides and Girl Scouts NOT Wives And Girlfriends you brits, has a world center very close to Mexico City. The news from the Chalet regarding the Cabana is this:

"Hey,

All's ok there at the moment so far as we've heard, although they have lots of people cancelling trips (some are coming here for summer instead now). General advice seems to be not to go to mexico at all, but some people will keep going i guess. i'm not sure if they'll stay open or close for a time as a precaution and send their staff home, but at the moment they're just being careful, wearing masks, washing their hands every hour etc. I'll try and keep you updated as I hear more though."

So, that's good news, I guess.

In other H1N1/me related news: Laura's been sick. I'm not saying she has the H1N1, but she did keep me up half the night with her Oinking...

Overwhelming

It's okay, I'm still here, but don't get too comfortable--Swine Flu is coming!  Much like the seasonal flu, car accidents, violence, cancer, and natural disasters, people will die from it. 

To be safe, I'm stocking up on Purel, bottled water, face masks and rhinestone studded gloves.

I'm also writing my proposal.