spring semester!

so i figure i owe this post to at least my mother to give her some idea of how i spend my days out here. for those of you who don't know yet, i'm back in the research lab! i'm working for dr. kennedy doing organic synthesis and i love it. i knew i missed doing research but i didn't realize just how much i missed it. here is a very, very simple and short summary of what i'm doing:

what we're doing is kind of a novel approach to drug design. most drugs are a molecule made to fit into a specific "pocket" on a protein to affect the protein's function. what we're doing is trying to alter a protein so it affects the way it interacts with other proteins.

if you want to read even more about what we're doing, you can visit dr. kennedy's lab page.
somehow dr. kennedy has gotten the idea that i'm some sort of organic synthesis prodigy, ever since i told her i got my chem degree from the U. i knew the U had an amazing chem department but i'm really surprised at how my status increases when i tell people at other universities that i went there. dr. kennedy even interviewed at the U for a professorship. (oh, also, in case matt ever reads this: you may be the only one at the U to do real chemistry since you do Stanford chemistry but i'm doing Harvard chemistry so suck on that.) dr. kennedy is pretty much a genius in my eyes so i'm flattered that she thinks so highly of me. i only hope i don't end up proving her wrong. this is where i'm actually thankful for jeremie and matt for holding me to such a high standard for a college freshman in her first research lab. a lot of their lessons have actually managed to stick and my technique is pretty amazing. of course, it's also a little easier now that i actually understand the concepts behind everything that i'm doing. also, i've found i can only run a column while listening to hardcore rock. i have jeremie to thank for that as well.
if you talk to me at all in the coming weeks and months, i will probably complain about running a column at some point so i decided i might as well take the opportunity to explain the process here before everyone starts asking questions (i'm looking at you, mom and lisa).

this is the basic setup of a column. i'll try and explain it as best as i can.
first, you start with silica gel. you dissolve it in your solvent system (i'm not going to try to explain how to choose a solvent system in this post) and pour it into your glass column. you want to make sure you have enough silica so that your molecules have plenty of room to separate. second, you load your impure product on the top of the silica layer then cover that with sand. the sand is there to protect the top of your silica layer from getting disturbed when you pour solvent in. it's important that your silica layer and impure product remain as level as possible, otherwise your molecules start running down the column slanted and you get what is called "mixed fractions," meaning you have collected more than 1 type of molecule in the test tube, which is bad.
okay, now that you have all that set up, you pour in some solvent and then cap the column with a nitrogen line. you increase the pressure in the column by blowing nitrogen onto it and that makes the solvent move through it quicker than it would if you just let gravity pull it down. assuming you've chosen your solvent system correctly and done everything else correctly thus far, theoretically you should be able to let the solvent drip into the test tubes below and manage to collect only one type of molecule at a time.
now, to give you an idea of how long this can take, each of those test tubes can hold roughly 10 mL and can take about 3 minutes to fill (this can be shorter if you turn up the nitrogen even higher but you run the risk of getting a whole different set of problems if you go too fast). for this particular column i was running, i went through roughly 1 L (or 1000 mL) of solvent. remember how it was 3 minutes per 10 mL? that means it took me around 5 hours to run this column. and even then i technically wasn't finished. i was forced to stop because we ran out of the solvent i was using.
wow. actually writing it out made it that much more depressing.
anyway, enough about chemistry. i probably did a horrible job of explaining this. i'm going to try and think of how to explain the theory behind it for a future post. don't hold your breath, though.
on a lighter note, my parents love me! they sent me a box full of fun stuff for valentine's day, including refills of my medications! wooohooo! but my favorite thing tucked inside was this:

i doubt anyone knows who this is, but it is timmy from shaun the sheep. shaun the sheep is an adorable series of short episodes from the guy who made wallace and grommit. i suggest you watch the following clip to understand just how adorable timmy is. thanks mom and dad! i love you guys :)

Spring Lamb (Shaun the Sheep) from Alexey Volkov on Vimeo.