Tomfoolery

I <3 the community recommended by redshoeson. Yippee for three new audio books in the queue for long runs!!!!

In a recent department newsletter form my undergrad I read something that has been bugging me.  My undergraduate advisor, of whom I am very close with, (I was in her wedding, I was there for her first child's birth, I see her every time I go home for holidays) was mentioned to have started a new research project.  This of course peaked my interested and a read on to find out what she was working on.   What  I read next confounded me.  She was starting a new project on Photodynamic Therapy(PDT). With metal complexes.  DOOOO WAHT?  
**for those of you who might not know, I work on PDT.   I work on metal complexes as photosentiezers.  I have talked to her and divulged lots of information about what our research group is working on**

I'm not sure if she was "inspired" by my research.  Or this is blatant steal.   She has always been an inorganic biochemist working on metalloproteins.  It's really, really strange that she is all of a sudden abandoning ship for this photophysics project.  (and no, she isn't on sabbatical; which was my first thought).    Should this weird me out?  Did she copy my idea for her research group? Hmm?

I'm not sure how to respond to the question:  "how's married life treating you?"   It's a nice question.  And it always comes from people that are my friends (who are often times married themselves), but how do I respond.

David and I haven't changed anything about what we do, how we act, or anything.  Married life to us is like well, life was before we had a ceremony and party.  I know the question comes from some archaic period where husband and wife  (errr?? husband?) didn't live together before they were married but we don't even fit the roles for which the question was formed.  


People  undoubtedly mean well by this cordial phrase.  I am sure what they really mean to say is "I'm so happy for you, and I just want to validate that I believe you are married?"  or "I know you're in a newlywed phase and are remarkably happy, I'm glad!"   It's the same  "how are you?" you ask someone who has just got a raise or just won the lottery.  The answer is of course, "Great!"  But the question of "how's married life?"  requires a more detail response.    

It just makes me chuckle.  I always respond:  "About the same, but my left hand is a little heavier now!"   I'm so glad to be married.  But my life is no different now,  I loved David then and I love him now.  So how's married life :   GREAT,  as ever!

So for the past nine months I have been working on synthesizing a series of compounds that we thought might be useful for some of the biological applications we do in our group.  Turns out they are not that interesting.  And that would be fine, and a publication except....some douche bag has published the compounds (with no characterization) in a two page, 8 citation communication.  Both Claudia and believe his data is crap, but because he already has it out there she doesn't want to publish just a "hey dude, you are totally fucking wrong" paper (and I don't know what the hell not!).  

At any rate, in attempt to make one last compound that could potentially be the "Star" of this ruthenium series, I am hoping to find a publication out of the last nine months of this particular project.  

And here is where the Zn comes in.   We thought we would make one of the precursors ourselves.  Ru(AN)6 ]2+  =  Hexakisacetonitrile ruthenium (II).  Funny compound, seems simple....but oh there is a twist.  You need Zn to reduce RuCl3*3H2O to the 2+ oxidation state.   And here is where I found the fun stuff about Zinc.

There is:

Zinc
Zinc powder
Zinc dust
Zinc granules
Zinc pellets
Mossy Zinc


And the list could go on.  Who knew Zinc metal came in so many forms (which btw are all the fucking same metal).  If you know what the gods of chemistry decided to have so many types names for the same thing enlighten me.  Other than surface area, they are all the same!

weirdness

Was late this morning (couldn't find my wedding ring or keys) finally found both but that meant that there was no  time for coffee.  So sad.  I got to work and wasn't in the office for more than 2 minutes before I had four group members surrounding me with questions.  Uh, when did I become the go to guy.  And with the lack of coffee, it was a lot to handle.  Never knew I had so many answers but, apparently I am awesome at pointing out the obvious.   But, yeah, not really loving this whole senior group member thing.     

Later, got tickets to the OUAB Lost event (Awesomeness!), went on a run, and made a kick ass lasagna dinner!  I love exercising and then eating gigantic amounts of pasta, sauce and sausage.  

 



So here's the problem.   We need to conjugate the 1,7- diacetic acid aza-crown to the 1,7-diamide aza-crown in such a way that produces:
1) a dimer and   2) a trimer of the aza-crown.

Caveats:

1) Bi-functionalization of aza-crown macrocycles can only be achieved, and only with identical functionalization groups 
1) EDC couples any  COOH to any primary NH2
2) We want high yield and easy purification
3) The final product (dimer or trimer) must have a primary COOH for conjugation to lysines on an antibody's surface


thoughts??


P.S.  this grant is due Monday!

So after waiting around at home all day to get my new Blackberry  (which I think I am going to love way more than the windows mobile device from Verizon).  David and I went to meet with our florist to sign our contract and put down the deposit. I did some awesome negotiating, playing the torn trendy gay man who wants to support a small women run business but who is being tortured by the  recession coinciding with his wedding; we got alot for alot less.  (Also, I feel like a horrible person for weaseling her our of money when she is clearly not going to survive this economy.)

I went to campus for group meeting, which was amazingly fast because the pot head (well I don't think he really smokes pot just  the kinda guy who wants to act like it) of the group was speaking.  He talked about this idea to use a phase transitioning polymer to detect blood platelet size and concentration.  I am pretty sure he  Claudia  didn't think this one through, because in under an hour the senior group members had pretty much put this project in the waste basket. 

The idea:  
*phase transitioning polymer is drastically sensitive to it's solvent environment.

*addition of a self quenching dye would associate (magically) with the polymer
                  
*upon introduction of platelets the emission would change (hopefully go up) correlating with the polymer associating with the platelets and the dye floating around free.


The problems:

*the phase transition is thermal

*dye aggregates readily in aqueous solution

*blood platelets vary in size (by their age) and the interaction could never give a definitive concentration (at least as good if not better) than the current technology


They say you are ready to graduate when you can out reason your advisor in the majority of your scientific debates

(   Bryan 1     |      Claudia 72845   )*





*this is never going to happen

 Just added HCl to a reaction with NaCN.  And didn't die.  Way to go me!  But these week long reactions with steps every 22 hrs  are killing me.

So, my advisor has an amazing way of not getting what I am telling her. She often times reads  the opposite intention in what I am say, so most of our conversations are backtracking.   I would assume this was a problem with the way I explain myself except she is the only one who gets confused by my explainations.  Everyone else in the lab seems to get it when I tell them.  I chalk it up to her constant neurosis over grants.  This woman must spend 80% of her career writing grants that don't seem to be funded.  And it's not that she is a bad writer or that the science is poor, quite the opposite actually.  It's just that she keeps barking up the wrong trees. 

My lab life is at a stand still right now, because one of our more careless lab members decided to break about 3 major instruments in the span of about two days.  And while we wait on the thousands of dollars worth of replacement parts (funded from a dwindling grant of mine; of which Claudia has found it necessary to worry over as well)  I spend my days doing long rxns (talking weeks here) with not much going on between the adding of reactants, changing of temp, etc.  

Oh but I am making headway on getting some ladies to pick out dresses for the wedding.  Perhaps we'll have another purchase by the end of the night!