Classical Convert

An Example Of Why I Don’t Get Enough Done At Work

This week, I am mostly preparing for our lab “retreat”. This is deservedly inserted between quotation marks, as along the way the retreat concept has morphed from something fairly enjoyable into something fairly terrifying. We are all required to perform multiple presentations on topics which we are entirely unfamiliar with. Starting at 8:30am and finishing at 9:00pm. All weekend.

One of my assigned topics is “Cohesins” which are the proteins that stick your DNA together when your cells divide, so that the copied DNA can be properly distributed between the new cells. Being a good boy (temporarily) I pored over the aneuploidy page on wikipedia. Aneuploidy is what happens when the division gets screwed up and the DNA isn’t divided equally between the two new cells, leading to genetic disorders like Down’s syndrome in which cells have an extra chromosome.

I ended up clicking through the various genetic diseases, getting more and more depressed about how easy it is for the body to accidentally mess itself up. This lead to the discovery of the disorder entitled blue-diaper syndrome, in which a genetic malfunction causes the body to have problems metabolizing the amino acid called tryptophan. This ends up instead being degraded by bacteria in the intestine, which produces a chemical called indole, itself a precursor to indigo dye, staining diapers blue.

I didn’t realize that indigo was a very specific chemical, and so this lead to a very detailed reading of the page on indigo dye, and further to the following company which sells woad seeds. It is now my desire to grow woad in my garden plot next year, extract indigo dye, stain some cloth and sew a wall hanging with the chemical formula for indigo on it:

And then I realized that I’d spent half an hour researching and planning this instead of finishing my presentation.