The Plant Blog

xkcd

I just started reading a great book, Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office. It’s about common mistakes women make that prevent them from getting promotions and achieving other career aspirations. Having read chapter one and a few pages from the rest of the book (it’s basically a big list of mistakes and how to fix them), I was just able to pick out an instance which occurred a few minutes ago.

My coworker is complaining that someone else is receiving all the opportunities for review papers from our boss, and one of the pieces of advice given in the book is to reach out and ASK for the projects you want to have rather than silently getting angry about other people receiving opportunities. She was also complaining about not being recognized for her hard work, another issue addressed in the book. The suggestion for this problem is to make a running list every week of what you’ve accomplished and how your skills have contributed to the accomplishments in a way that sets yourself apart. Then introduce your list during meetings or presentations, of course in a non-snobby manner. Take all the credit for your hard work. Don’t let it become background knowledge.

So… note to self: if I feel like I want some more glory time, I need to make it known that I want to take on some additional work. Also, I need to keep track of everything I accomplish and make sure people know that what I do is not something that any old idiot off the street can do. It takes some serious brainpower and experience.

DON’T BE A WALLFLOWER! FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS! Don’t be a girl. Be a woman.

I’m going to grad school in the fall! It’s time I became edumacated. Future dreams: I’m not sure about what those are yet, but I am thinking I want to stay in academia as long as sequestration doesn’t destroy funding. Boo, Republicans. I’m still waiting to hear back from UCSD, but at this point, I am assuming it’s a rejection. I will most likely be attending Michigan State with a Plant Science Fellowship.

To sessile organisms!

The “central dogma” that more or less is true is DNA -> RNA -> Protein. Non-coding RNAs notwithstanding, RNA abundance gives you an indication of what genes are active at any given time in any given condition. RNA sequencing is a process wherein you do these things:

1) Isolate RNA from your organism

2) Sequence the RNA molecules

3) Match the RNA to the reference genome sequence and count up the number of molecules per gene

Aligning “reads” to the reference genome. Then count up the number of reads per gene to figure out the abundance of RNA. God, this explanation makes everything sound so simple.

That was put very simply, but it’s the basic idea behind the technique. Today I am taking my RNA and doing a DNA digestion (because we don’t want to be matching up DNA and RNA, since that would change the counts per gene making it look like the gene is more highly expressed). Then I’ll be doing a quality check and then, annoyingly, WAITING for reagents that got lost during Hurricane Sandy. I placed the order right after the storm but apparently the lab manager never put it in… curses.

I was at the Developmental Genetics Symposium at my work building yesterday, where I heard a lot of jealousy-inducing research like that of Robert Singer’s lab. I also heard a talk which made me think about our approach to science. This researcher is convinced that cell division is triggered by the sensing of cell size in Saccharomyces pombe, the fission yeast that kind of looks like E. coli since it’s a rod shape. I’m not convinced that this is true, but it is certainly a newer way of thinking about cell division and the goings-on in everyday cell biology: how do cells sense how big they are? You can come up with a lot of new biological questions by opening up your way of thinking by asking these kinds of questions, even if they end up not being relevant.