The Friday Fermentable, foiled

As alluded to on ScienceBlogs.com editors' Page 3.14 blog, many of us are formalizing our more light-hearted posts on Fridays to coincide with the inevitable dropoff in internet traffic and reality-based work.

I had intended to launch today "The Friday Fermentable," my views on the joys of partaking in the diversity of products resulting from biochemical conversion of glucose to ethyl alcohol by Saccharomyces cerevisiae and other yeasts, and the alchemy of other long chain alcohols, organic acids, and esters.

I was particularly excited because I am on vacation and am currently holding court at a fabulous but remarkably affordable hotel, lined up by my ever internet-savvy wife, with a tremendous wine bar and well-studied and approachable bartender.

But, alas, another microorganism and its brethren have made their way into my gastrointestinal tract over the last several days, reducing me to an electrolyte-imbalanced lump that can barely respond to e-mail, much less walk downstairs to the bar. At least the views of the mountains from my bed and bathroom are pretty sweet.

More than you needed to know, I recognize. But check back next Friday for the first installment of The Friday Fermentable.

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Excellent! Maybe I should start a companion piece which highlights studies of the one of the world's most overworked enzymes (see today's entry at the Refuge).

I hope you boot that microorganism out of your system soon so you can get back to inducing your LADH.

Hoping you feel better soon!! We love wine here :-)

Bummer. Hope you're up on your feet again soon. I was knocked down by a virus over the 4th. So how 'come these things invade our vacations?

Thanks, all - we're checking out of our hotel this morn but will try to keep tabs on this week's bartender, Dan, who I hope will work with me next week to put our discussions to paper, er, blog.

Doc B: I'll pop on over to The Refuge; I'm sure you mean ALDH or ADH, right? Heck, I've also probably got hepatic CYP2E1 induction to boot!

Doc Hooker: You are in one of the premier places in the US for fermentables - don't be shy about making any suggestions for topics or specific libations you've encountered.

Anjou: I won't necessarily restrict this to wine, but you can be certain that I will have to be consulting with your houseboy for accuracy and insights as I get this thing rolling. And you probably now understand why the curcumin post didn't get done this week...

SciMom: Yes, I read that you were sick as well; as a non-MD, I understand that we jack up our cortisol getting all of our crap done to go on vacation. Then, once we can relax, cortisol levels drop and we become much more suspectible to things that have been a-stewing.

BTW, thank you ever so much for your very thoughtful post in the wake of the death of my intern's brother. Although PharmMom is a two-decades breast cancer survivor, I've also gotten a lot more emotional about my work since we had our little girl. Your writing about Candace reminds me how important it is for us PhD cancer researchers to stay in touch with why we actually do this business. You not only touched her life and that of her family, but of all cancer patients who now follow in her footsteps. I know it's tough to do this work as a Mom in a cancer research environment where it seems the women mentors don't even support the women trainees, but you're doing great work in a great institution. Thanks for talking about this - and, y'all, get over to SciMom's Doubleloop for some other first-rate cancer research blogging.