luck

for some unknown reason, I have been really, really lucky with all things science this year. Everything I've tried works, or at least works with minor issues. Yesterday, I managed to get a fairly decent western blot from a new antibody that isn't very homologous to my protein (it's only 70% with the recommended minimum is 75%). To add to all that, the antibody was held up in Australian customs for a week without refrigeration, so I really had no idea if it would work at all. And, it even works when it's really diluted (1:50,000) so I don't have to worry about using it all up. All in all, it was a good day.

Translation: a western blot basically allows you to identify proteins. You grind up tissue in a special buffer with things that keep enzymes from destroying your ptoteins. Spin all the non-protein junk down to the bottom of a tube, figure out how much protein you actually have in your tube using a very cool assay that changed from green to purple when it finds protein. Then you load your proteins onto a gel to separate them according to size, transfer all the proteins on the gel laterally onto a membrane using an electrical current, then apply your antibody to your membrane. Unfortunately, you can't see what your antibody is binding to at this point so you have to apply another antibody, called the secondary, that recognizes a little tag on your first antibody. The secondary has its own little tag that can be made to give off light. So you expose your membrane to film and develop it and you have a western. If an antibody is 70% homologous it means that the chunk of your protein that the antibody binds to has 70% of the same amino acids. The more amino acids that are the same, the better the antibody binds.
Now you can all call ourselves molecular biologists. Funny enough, there's also Southern and northern blots. East was left out of the party, but we can save that lesson for another day.

Spamalot and Thanksgiving fun

I almost forgot...after an amazing Thanksgiving lunch with my supervisors and other grad students, a couple of friends and I went across to Melbourne to see Spamalot, which has just started playing. I never got to see in on Broadway, but it was fantastic! It's showing in one of Melbourne's largest theatres, but it was still very small by NY standards. We had awesome seats in the front row of the balcony. I was laughing the whole time, and they even threw in some uniquely Australian moments. The only thing that was not done perfectly was actually funnier as a result. It's very hard for Australians to imitate a French accent so the French characters had an Australian twist to their accent that was fantastic.

A new PM

Well, ir has been an eventful couple of days for Australia. In a landslide victory, we have overthrown the sitting government and elected a new prime minister, Kevin Rudd. It has to be pretty big news if anything related to Australia makes front page of the NY Times. I watched the election coverage on TV saturday night. It was rather amusing. Voting is mandatory in Australia; if you don't do it, you're fined. To circumvent people with excuses like "I don't have time between 8am, and 6pm on Saturday to vote", you can vote at polling booths in the few days preceeding the election, or you can send in your ballot by mail. On the ballot, you number the candidates in order of your preference. If your first preference doesn't win a certain percentage of the votes, your second preference is counted, and so on. This has the very interesting consequence that a vote for a minor party doesn't detract from a major party's ability to win the election.
There was a gradation of silliness on the network channels in terms of election coverage. ABC, the national company, was the most serious; completely lacking such embellishments as cartwheeling cartoons of candidates as parliament seats were won or the 'tower of power': a projection of the number of seats won by each party onto the tallest building in Melbourne. The networks also vastly disagreed on the early outcomes of the election with one channel declaring Kevin Rudd the winner almost two hours before ABC finally caved.
Because Australia has such a relatively small population, the votes get counted very quickly. For many parliament seats, almost 100% of the votes were counted just 2 hours after the polls closed. It definitely made for much more exciting election coverage.
I'm off to a conference in Perth toward the end of this week and from that point onward life becomes really exciting for a while. First, seeing Perth will be amazing because it's a completely different side (literally) from Australia and I'm excited to present at my first conference. Only a few days after I get back, Becca arrives and we begin a several-week long adventure around Australia and New Zealand (since she convinced me to see NZ with her as well). I am sooooo excited, although from the looks of it the NZ part of the trip is much better planned than the Australian part. I think we will get on alright, though and have some awesome adventures on the great barrier reef and in the outback.