Alex Palazzo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at The University of Toronto.
Yes it looks like I've abandoned my blog, but to be honest in the past few weeks my world has been rocked, scientifically.
You see to be a scientist is to be obsessed. Now like some crazed psychotic individual I will try to explain the nature of this infatuation with my work. This desire to obtain the precious insight into the small part of the natural world that remains the foccus of my studies.
It starts about one and a half years ago. You see I had a couple of findings that looked good and I sat on them for a while as I attempted to tackle other problems. This set of data, and the model that it represented, made sense in light of certain published results. Then in early 2008 I came back to this project and I tried my best to follow up on this line of experimentation, but nothing worked outright. I had some leads, some false starts but after about 8 months I hit a brick wall. And so in late November I decided to go back to the beginning, I tried to wipe the slate clean and start afresh. Instead of a candidate approach I decided to tackle the problem with an unbiased assay, a fishing expedition. I thought to myself "lets see what I can catch". For the first few weeks of December the fishing expedition looked good, I even had a handful of catches. But what could they be???
So I isolated each factor and sent them to be identified by mass spectroscopy. Then I waited. Christmas came and went. Friend visited from New York, family visited from Montreal and then early on New Years Eve I received an email from the mass spec facility. My results had arrived! Before anyone was up, I looked over the list and realized what I had stumbled into. I couldn't believe my eyes. It's obviously the answer. Obvious. I should have gone fishing earlier. Now all that is missing is the last piece of the puzzle. That last factor that must link all the bits together.
This is why I haven't been blogging. This is why it's 10:01PM and I'm in the lab. This is why I've been totally obsessed with my work.
This is why I'm in science.
Comments
Congratulations on the exciting results! Looking forward to hearing more.
Posted by: Andre | January 6, 2009 10:52 PM
There is no better drug. You'll have to write a detailed post once the paper hits Science Express.
Posted by: Neuro-conservative | January 6, 2009 11:38 PM
Woo-hoo! Let us know how it turns out.
Posted by: Monado | January 7, 2009 12:29 AM
wow, sounds amazing. I'm excited what the mysterious factor will be! Congrats :)
Posted by: stephi | January 7, 2009 2:33 AM
Yeah, that shit is what makes all the careerism yadda, yadda, yadda worth it.
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | January 7, 2009 8:36 AM
Sweet, can't wait to hear what it is. Juniorprof is having a similar experience now revisiting old stuff from a new angle. 12 hour days over the christmas break in the lab and I wouldn't have rather been anywhere else in the world. Now teaching duties are creeping up on me and I don't have time to wrap it all up. Ordinarily I loves me some teaching but now it feels like the gallows approaching.
Posted by: juniorprof | January 7, 2009 8:58 AM
Hey Alex,
you should know better that mass spec is the way to go!
Looking forward to collaborating with you soon.
Posted by: Steph | January 8, 2009 9:59 AM
"my world has been rocked, scientifically"
How does that experiment go?
0.375 rock -> no response
0.75 rock -> no response
1.5 rock -> Alex stops blogging, presumably due to rocking.
Literary criticism aside, I'm guessing that your scientific world was rocked. Fun stuff - I'll look forward to hearing about your Factor X.
Also - what's up with the propagation of the mad scientist stereotype? Seriously dude - scientists aren't all crazy.
Posted by: Byron | January 8, 2009 2:54 PM
Byron,
Man, we miss ya. In fact, Yoko, Karl and I just came back from the Squealing Pig where we were reminiscing about the days when you were in the lab.
P.S. the scientific rock scale must be logarithmic.
Steph,
Right now mass spec rules! I can't wait to be in UofT where I will be abusing all my new colleagues (expect me to pass by the lab with samples every few weeks!)
Posted by: Alex Palazzo | January 8, 2009 8:22 PM
It was a dilution series! I was titrating the rock in until I got a result.
Posted by: Byron | January 8, 2009 8:55 PM
I see. I thought that your numbers were referring to earth shaking measurements, making me a lilliputian of the scientific world (which, in a sense, I am). But seeing that we have a history of experimenting with liquids, I guess that the titration metaphor makes more sense.
Posted by: Alex Palazzo | January 9, 2009 8:39 AM