Transcription and Translation

Hello everyone,

It's been quite a while since I've even looked at my blog. Much has happened since I last posted. I said goodbye to all my friends in Boston, moved back to my native country, started up a lab, hired my first employee, gone to a few scientific conferences, assigned projects to eager undergrads, dealt with the bureaucracy of a major University from a whole different level, written my first grant as a PI, and seen my young son pass through several developmental stages.

And here I am, reviving my long neglected blog. In honour* of this resurrection (or is it a metamorphosis), I have RENAMED my blog from the Daily Transcript to Transcription and Translation.

Why?

First, the overwhelming new set of responsibilities will make it impossible for me to post a new entry every day (although you could cynically point out that I never achieved that pace). In fact a friend suggested that I rename it "The Occasional Transcript". In any case you have been warned, this blog will be one that will updated once a week (twice if I get my act together and revive my Map That Campus). Your best bet is to subscribe to my RSS feed, and thus you will be notified anytime a new post appears.

Second, I felt like I needed a new name - none that reflected what I originally set out to create with this blog, a view of science and the greater world from someone at the bench.

Someone to translate scientific concepts for the lay person.

Lastly, after an mRNA is transcribed it is translated. Just like the information contained within that mRNA, I too have moved up the ladder (albeit the academic ladder). My goal in life is not only to produce data and "pump out" papers, but to convert this knowledge into a tool for teaching (and to convert the lab's work into grant funding!)

Speaking of my new position, I was talking to Larry yesterday about blogging and academia, and I believe that our department (The Biochemistry Department at the University of Toronto) may be the only biomedical science department in the world to have two faculty members blogging. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Okay that's all I have to say.

Actually I do have one more item I would like to bring up.

A great motivator for blogging is to receive comments. I would be lying if I wrote "it has nothing to do with vanity", but in addition it motivate me to post more often, and it transforms the blog from a pew where I just spew any random though that enters my brain, to a discussion. And frankly that's what I would like this blog to be.

* This is no typo, as I am writing from Canada. A land whose former conservative Prime Minister praised Obama for his efforts to reform health care. I am glad to be back home.