All The Single Ladies

Confession: when I sat down a few mornings ago to begin sorting out virgin female flies, I realized that Beyonce's "Single Ladies" had begun to play in my head. Embarrassing.

But currently, the song is appropriate for my work in the lab. I feel a little bit like the Drosophila village matchmaker, sorting out the single ladies & single men (aka flies) from my collection, & then "making matches" (sticking them in a vial together) to create happy unions (get the genetic crosses that I want -- the flies really don't get so much say in their own happiness, unforunately).

I'm currently studying genes that have been linked with obesity, taking likely candidates from a genome-wide screen and then examining them further. If all goes well, I should pick up another project in a few weeks, but we'll have to see how this one takes off, first.

Outside of lab, things are wonderful, as well. This past weekend, I traveled to Strasbourg on Saturday and then Lake Konstantz on Sunday. Strasbourg was beautiful, as was Konstantz, but pictures will have to follow -- sadly, my camera battery has died and it looks like I left the charger at home.

Highlight of Lake Konstanz was a close tie between Germany's winning the Germany v. England game and then getting to watch the entire city explode with pride and excitement, and going paddleboating on the lake. Only problem with the boating -- I decided to jump in halfway through -- which was incredibly refreshing, but also prompted the German woman in charge of the paddleboats to zoom alongside us on a motorboat and yell at me -- apparently jumping out of the paddleboats is not condoned. Who knew? (But really. They never told us! And it seemed like a great place for a swim.)

Until I can charge my camera, I'll try to keep these posts short so as not to bore you (the few faithful readers I have -- again, Mom, Dad, & possibly Nikola) with too many words & not enough pictures. So for now, tschuss!