Parents visit

My parents Carol and Jim arrived in Dunedin this morning! I still haven't seen them yet, as they are sleeping off jetlag, but am looking forward to touring around the Otago Peninsula with them tomorrow. Then they will be off to Fiordland, the West Coast, Mt. Cook, and Mt. Tongariro, a snow-covered volcano on the North Island.

I've had a fantastic few weeks back in Dunedin, enjoying the late summer sunshine and making good progress on my thesis writing and finishing up a couple experiments. We're now ready to take the fluorescently labelled protein I've made to a total internal reflection microscope down the road at the medical school for single molecule studies. We hope to immobilize the protein to a poly-lysine cover slip that will allow us to resolve the fluorescence of individual DnaK proteins. If we overcome a few technical hurdles and can see the protein move, it would be the icing on my thesis and to my knowledge the first time anyone has done single molecule studies of Hsp70.

Also in the last few weeks we designed a t-shirt for the Wilbanks group that I will be proud to wear. Here is the design.