A long time between posts...

Well, it really has been quite a while. I've had my computer back for a week now, but the incompetent service people (some of whom appear to have been sacked) have still not repaired it successfully, and it experiences the veil of death once per day, often at inconvenient times. I cannot bear to be parted from it again so soon, since it is the only way I can get video chat with Australia, but I know that it's going to have to go back in for repairs very soon.

As to what I've been doing for the last few weeks, the answer is really "Not much". Research has been proceding, and I am now mostly working on my own. I haven't done a great deal with my main project yet, since I have been working on a separate project in which my supervisor seems quite interested. It is a more clinically-focussed project than mine, looking to develop a treatment for prostate cancer. I don't hold much hope for it, but we shall see what happens. So far, though, it has not been good. Why? We have previously run a couple of QPCRs looking at the two RNAs of interest in the prostate cancer cell lines we have cultured. The results had been fairly stable. However, I took a look at the literature to see what was expected, and although the data were very scarce, what we had found seemed to be different from what would be expected. Therefore we decided to change from SYBR green (with which we had had some problems) to TAQMAN, which is far more specific, but much more expensive. For comparison, 250 reactions with TAQMAN probes is about £300, whereas a similar amount of SYBR green primers costs only £3 (and arrives from Germany on the same day/next day... shockingly fast post). With the TAQMAN probes, we got the same results as we had had with SYBR green. However, I repeated the experiment in triplicate to have some solid data, and the results were significantly different. We thought that this could be a problem with the cDNA, but the RNA that I looked at at the same time, as well as the housekeeping gene, showed previously validated results. I ran an experiment with the last of the old cDNA alongside some new cDNA, and the results of both were different, and also somewhat different to the previous results. What was interesting was that the results were closer to what would have been expected from the literature.

Yesterday I ran yet another repeat, and the results were different again. Two particular cell lines seem to have results that shoot all over the place, and there is little explanation for it. It still remains to be seen what is the problem...

I have not been doing any cell culture for a few days now, which has been nice because it has given me the last two weekends free. I will have to start doing some culture again soon becuase we have run out of RNA of a number of our cell lines. This means that I'm probably going to be working 7 days for a while as I struggle with 7 cell lines at once. At least I only need RNA and not miRNA and protein at the same time. I am learning transfections, which I have not yet started, but will be doing at some point in the next few months when I have established a decent cell line panel for the SPRED (Sprouty-related Enabled/Vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein homology domain 1 Domain-containing protein...) and have good data about the expression levels. I will not begin my culturing this week since it is a bank holiday (=long weekend) this weekend, and I will be visiting my cousin in Kent. She has a place in a fairly rural village, with chickens (yay!), and I am going to visit an English beach. Should be interesting... I will have photos to show.

This will be my first time leaving Cambridge since I arrived here, and one of the things that really shocked me about this was the cost of public transport here. I am travelling a distance of only 82 miles (approximately equivalent to Frankston to Geelong), but the tickets cost me the better part of £40! Just imagine if it cost us $80 (or even $40) to make that trip. For the same price, I can easily fly to Sydney or Brisbane from Melbourne. Oh, and this is after the 1/3 student discount, and the cheap off-peak tickets, and booking well in advance to minimise cost. It is no surprise that everyone here seems to own a car; when a car will pay for itself in 10 trips (yes, cars here are very cheap; a new car can be bought and insured for under £2000, and second-hand cars start around £200-£400 for a reasonable car with low mileage)

The weekend before last, I had some free time, so I decided to visit the Fitzwilliam museum, since I have heard a lot about it and wanted to see it for myself. I was there for a whole day, but was only able to explore a single floor, so I will have to visit it again. It is an huge place, with artifacts from all over the world, and it is well laid-out. Most importantly, it is free entry. While I was there, I was fortunate enough to discover that a recital was going to take place that day, so I was able to hear an excellent violinist play a number of pieces, the only one of which I really cared for was La Campanella. I am looking forward to the early music festival that is approaching, and there are early music recitals every week. I just wish that work finished in time to regularly attend, but even if I could that would certainly reduce the number of dinners I would be able to have each week. Many of the festival recitals will be on weekends and in some of the cathedrals around, so I am quite excited to attend these.

I have posted some new pictures on Flickr. Please look and comment. :) There are still a number that need sorting before posting, so some more will be up in the next few days. Here is a church I discovered while meandering outside of town on my bike.

There is a lot of beautiful rural scenery and nature around here, as well as the ancient buildings. Nature here is interesting, since with Australian eyes it all looks man-made. In many ways, it is; this country has been grazed and farmed for so long that even the forests conform to man's will. However, it's lovely to see wild apple trees, plum trees, and blackberries everywhere, and to be able to pick and eat fruit while riding along (if one can avoid the ever-present wasps). Back home, these plants would be considered evidence of man's presence, but here they are actually native. On certain roads there is the ever-present smell of cider from all the fallen apples fermenting by the roadside.

One of my weekend activities seems to be to fight a war against the wasps. I don't like these insects, but refuse to kill them, and perhaps they realise this and therefore are rather bold in their attempts to eat my food. No matter how much I close my windows (something which I do not like doing), draw the curtains, and trap the wasps in bathtowels, they keep coming back through my window and flying around, looking for my cordial, I think. I close it tightly and wash it vigorously, but the wasps still seem to like elderflower cordial as much as I do. One wasp had the misfortune of becoming trapped under a towel which I must have pressed down slightly too firmly, and was a casualty of war. The rest have, for now, been put off by the slightly cooler weather. I dread the forecast of sun for the weekend, because it means that the war will resume. These wasps are far too ingenious; I trapped one in my bin, put it out in the corridor still trapped in the bin, and closed my door. It managed to eat its way out through the plastic, crawl under my door, and fly around the room again... Very clever for an insect!

Some wasps attacking a cluster of blackberries

I will post some more soon, and certainly after this weekend, when I will have some new scenery and new experiences to provide blog-fodder.