Friday, May 18, 2007

The state of my career

I've been working toward my PhD for a very long time now. I submitted a paper, they asked for some additional experiments, I did them, and came up with an unexpected result that will require me to largely rewrite the paper. It kind of weakens the original point, but makes for a more complete story. However, I've been having a lot of trouble getting a couple of other experiments to work, so I went back to try and figure out what might have caused my unexpected result. Basically, my protein is synthesized much slower than a closely related protein, indicating a different RNA structure... Understanding how all this works is not necessary, however, as I think the picture is really worth 1000 words:


My career has been reduced to a picture of a phallus.

(As a sidenote, if you tilt your head to the right, it looks like a snowman with a big gun...or a huge erection...you know, whatever.)

The reason for the slower synthesis is likely the little antenna between the shaft and the left testicle. Sigh. I'm going to have to do a lot of practicing so I can present this with a straight face.