CENtral Science

Yup, still in Kansas.

Your protein of the day! Aurora A Kinase is protein involved in mitosis, and is generally upregulated in cancerous tumors. It is very difficult to target because of its highly conserved C-terminal Kinase domain. (See inset for ADP) From PDB: 4mq1

Wow!  It has certainly been a long time.  I guess a blog can sometimes be like a google reader account.  You can get into the rhythm and read all your articles for a week, but then you forget about it and you get 620 items into your unread folder.  Oops.  Anyhow, here’s just a little post to get y’all updated with what’s going on with me.

Senior year is going pretty well  - I’ve been spending 20-30 hours in lab a week.  I would like to be spending more, but I have these silly things called requirements to fulfill.  Oh well, I guess my 45-50 hours weeks can wait until I start graduate school.  Research is definitely on a better rhythm than it has been in the past.  I feel like I’ve stopped making some of the small mistakes, and can now actually execute the science at a high level, and pretty efficiently.  My only limit now is how much time I have (and how quickly I can get reagents mailed in).  I’m sure once I start working in cells or doing some more serious organic chemistry my pace will bog down a bit, but for now it’s pretty nice to be working efficiently.

I’ve started work on a thesis, which is going on nicely so far.  Unfortunately, keeping procrastination to a minimum is harder than I anticipated.  The plan right now is to really start working on the methods, and hopefully be up to date by winter break (when I really) have to start writing.

As for the blog, you’ll get in the near future my ruminations on the Chem GRE, some more talk of Chemical Biology, and a little bit on the application process, or what little of it I’ve gone though.  Stick around for a whole lot more content in the coming weeks!

-Sidechain