Tag: washu

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Progress

I’ve been here at Wash U for over 6 months now and we submitted my first paper (from here) to Molecular Pharmacology this morning.  Granted, there’s no guarantee they’ll publish it or anything (in which case we’ll just send it elsewhere), but the fact that I was able to pull together enough data for a journal article in the relatively short time I’ve been here, while also learning electrophysiology, is pretty good.  The work we’re hoping to publish in Mol Pharm is what I’ll be presenting at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting this coming October in New Orleans (!!!!), so it’s kinda nice to know I’ve already got all the figures done: I’ll just have to arrange them on a poster-size sheet of paper and remind myself what I did almost a year earlier.

It was very helpful to hop onto a project we knew would pan out.  At the time I started, I don’t think we intended to go as far with it as we have (my boss initially told me that I could have all the data done by the end of last year…HAH!), but it went in some interesting directions and lead to a stronger paper, in the end.  I definitely learned quite a bit during the course of the research, though there’s still a ways to go before I would consider myself an “expert” in these techniques and concepts.

Honestly, I’m pretty pleased we got this paper out.  My boss here is very focused on productivity, which is a good thing as I’d like to get a few papers out in my remaining time here.  Once this one’s published, that’ll be three “first-authored” papers (i.e. your name is first on the list of authors, indicating that you did the bulk of the work and the writing) in total.  I’d like at least one more, if not two, before I get out of here.

My plan is still to begin applying for teaching positions this Fall, preferably for liberal arts colleges in Missouri, Iowa or Southern Illinois.  Having 3 papers complete is helpful, but having a good deal of data toward a fourth one would be even better.  There’s something of a “quality vs quantity” game you play in this field, where it’s good to have your name on a bunch of papers (i.e. having a lengthy list of papers you’ve contributed to on your C.V. when you’re applying for a job), but at the same time, it’s arguably just as good to have your name first on fewer papers, making it clear what your contribution was to the work in question.  I guess we’ll see which one’s more important in a few months.

Regardless, I haven’t posted much about how things are going in the lab, largely because there’s not much to tell.  I’m learning more and more each week, I’ve presented data to the lab a few times, and I’m gaining more confidence that I’m not a complete idiot (though I still feel like it at times).  This environment is definitely different from my experience at SLU and Iowa, though: a far more “Ivy League” mentality about productivity, the quality of other people’s science, and the need to get more funding in order to do high quality work.  It certainly isn’t making me want to go into academic research as a career, but it’s nice to get to see it first-hand as I interact with other postdocs and students from around here.

So, now that this paper’s complete, I’m moving on to different techniques and different concepts.  I think this new project is a bit more interesting to me, from a physiological perspective, but is by no means easier to study.  In many ways, it’s addressing the kinds of things that other people have avoided because they’re such a pain to address, but we’re hoping the skills our lab has will give us an advantage that others may not have.

After all that work, though, I think it’s time for a three-day weekend.  Or maybe a vacation.

Or maybe both. 🙂

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The Wheels on the Bus

Washington University School of Medicine, where I work, doesn’t have what I like to call “cheap parking.”  If I recall, it’s something like $60 or $70 per month to park within a few blocks of the building I work in, and personally, I’d rather spend that kind of money on video games or beer.

However, as part of their sustainability initiative, Wash U pays for all students and employees to have a yearly St. Louis Metro pass.  This means that, so long as I have the pass and present my University ID card, I can ride any bus or any MetroLink (the above-ground train system) for free.

Unfortunately, though, while the MetroLink has a reasonably decent reputation with regards to cleanliness and timeliness, the MetroBus system doesn’t.  And furthermore, we don’t really live anywhere near a MetroLink stop where I could hop on, at least, not in any convenient manner.  Therefore, I’m riding the bus.  The “scary, dirty, slow,” bus.

To be fair, I’m only riding it in the evenings.  Brooke is driving me to work in the mornings, then dropping Meg off at daycare and then finally going to work herself.  Most mornings, this isn’t a problem, though there’s something of a “sweet spot” in timing that we try to avoid.  If we leave the house by 7:40 am, or after 8:15 am, we can get me to work in 15 min or so.  If we leave anytime inbetween, it’s closer to 30 min.  Yay, St. Louis traffic.

But in the evenings, I’m riding the bus.  Brooke picked me up for the first week or two, since I didn’t have my bus pass yet.  This “worked,” but Meg wasn’t exactly happy having to sit in her car seat for nearly 45 min every afternoon.  It’s made things much easier now that Brooke can just bring her straight home.  My bus trips tend to take 20-30 min in the evenings, so it isn’t a huge deal.  As long as I leave before 6:00 pm, there are buses running just about every 20 min to the stop(s) near my building.

The buses themselves are alright.  They aren’t all that dirty, and while I haven’t exactly figured out the best time to go outside to wait at the stop, I can’t really say that they’re consistently late or anything.  The bus stop where I get off the bus is on Kingshighway, so after I get off, I still have to walk a few blocks before I get home.  Right now, it isn’t an issue, but once we get a foot of snow on the ground, I may think otherwise.

I do want to address the “scary” part of the city bus stereotype, though.  Is the bus full of rich, white, Americans?  Nope.  Lots of African Americans, lots of Hispanics, lots of elderly people, lots of low-income people…and lots of other people inbetween.  Heck, on the ride home last night around 5:30, white people out-numbered black people 2:1 on my bus.  Was I a bit apprehensive the first time I rode the bus, looking down the aisle at the various “characters” that I’ve been told would terrorize me over the last decade?  Yeah, I probably was, to some extent.  Now, after a few weeks, it’s pretty easy and I don’t give it a second thought.  And, to be fair, there are seemingly “well off” people riding the bus as well.  Perhaps not as many, but they’re there.  In total, it’s probably the most diverse place you’ll find in the greater metropolitan area.  And they just want to get where they’re going each day without much fuss, just like anyone and everyone else.

I guess I think it’s important that I ride the bus, partially to show others that it really isn’t all that scary, and partially to “walk the walk” when I talk about sustainability.  Mass transit, overall, is a good way to save money and help the environment.  It takes cars off the road and reduces demand on gasoline.  Because there are fewer cars on the road, that means fewer cars that go to scrap yards some day, fewer tires that go into the landfill, and fewer emissions that go into our air.  Generally speaking, using mass transit is an ideal way that people can do their part to help the environment.

There are plenty of people around that think we should all use mass transit more often, but these same people wouldn’t be caught dead on a city bus.  The city bus isn’t good enough for them.  The city bus is dirty and dangerous and they will only use services like MetroLink, or like the Metro system in Washington, D.C.  Rather than submit to riding the bus, instead, they will drive their car that 4 miles and park it, even though the amount of time spent doing so is equivalent to riding the bus.

I’m sure I’ve told people in the past that I’d use public transportation if I had it.  And for many years, I didn’t consider the bus to be “public transportation.”  To me, and to many others, I’d argue, “public transportation” equals “light rail,” while “riding the bus” equals “only for poor people and minorities.”  Maybe it goes unsaid, but that’s the general impression I get from other people when the prospect of “riding the bus” comes up.  However, the only reason light rail systems like MetroLink exist is because there were enough people riding buses for that distance that it made financial sense to build a rail system.  Thus, the more people that ride buses within the city of St. Louis, and other communities, the more likely municipal officials will be to finance more light rail systems.

Therefore, I’m trying to “walk the walk” after “talking the talk” about mass transit.  If I can do my part to ride the city bus, I’ll do it as long as I can.  It saves me money and it saves my wife and kid time that they don’t have to be in the car to pick me up every day.  Win/win.

But in the end, if the bus is good enough for the other people that ride it, the bus is good enough for me.

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Back in the Swing of Things

Here's what I'm using all day now.

I’m sure I’ll have more to report on in the future, but for right now, I can safely say that I’m settling in at the new job.  I’ve been telling people for awhile now that there would be a definite “learning curve” with the science carried out here, and believe you me, I wasn’t kidding.  I’m having to re-learn basic circuit mechanics (i.e. resistance, capacitance, voltage, etc.) from physics class 8 years ago in order to comprehend the bulk of what I’m doing, so that’s where much of my learning is coming from.  The rest of it is coming from the actual manipulations of cells in order to collect meaningful data.

Basically, what I’m doing now in the lab of Steven Mennerick in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University, is termed “electrophysiology.”  It’s a technique used to record changes in current and voltage across the membrane of a cell, in this case, hippocampal neurons from mice.  I’ll write more about this in a Primer sometime after I get more settled, but in short, the process involves attaching an electrode to the interior of a cell, and then a second electrode outside the cell in the surrounding fluid.  Depending on what drugs and ions you have present in the two locations (intracellular and extracellular), you can record peaks that look very much like ECG recordings from your heart.  These peaks will tell you whether sodium, potassium, calcium, chloride, etc. are entering or leaving the cell, which in turn tells you about how the cell functions.  Specifically, it gives you insight into neurotransmission, as the process of a cell receiving a neurotransmitter (e.g. dopamine, adrenaline, etc.) must involve some change in the flow of ions across the cell membrane.

The rig pictured above is the one I’m learning on.  It’s a large microscope with some tubes and electrodes running up to the state where the dish of cells sit.  Then, you use some little knobs and widgets to move the electrodes very slowly toward the cell so you don’t kill it by “popping” it.  So yeah, this takes some practice.  You have to make sure you don’t break the cell open, you have to make sure you don’t damage your electrode, and you also have to make sure you’re doing everything fast enough so that certain components of the system don’t “go bad” to the point where you need to replace them.  There’s a healthy balance between speed of operation and “care” of operation in all of this, for sure.

Aside from learning how to actually puncture and gather data from the cell, I’m having to learn about the aforementioned physics of circuits.  Good thing my Dad works with circuit breakers, just in case I ever need some help.

I’m definitely making progress, though.  I’ve been able to successfully puncture (or “patch,” as the technical lingo goes) more than a few cells, so right now, I’m working on consistency more than anything.  I’m hoping to get some more reading done today or tomorrow so I begin to understand why I’m doing some of the things I’m doing.

At the very least, it’s keeping me busy.  🙂