We just started a new block - Normal Body - where we learn what most med school students spend a whole year on in 3 months. I'll have more to say about that in my next post.
Right now, I want to share a mini-triumph. Today my name made it into the literature - the scientific literature that is.
A Biosynthetic Strategy for Re-engineering the Staphylococcus aureus Cell Wall with Non-native Small MoleculesJames W. Nelson, Alexander G. Chamessian, Patrick J. McEnaney, Ryan P. Murelli, Barbara I. Kazmiercak, and David A. Spiegel
So a quick summary:
Gram-positive bacteria have complex cell walls with proteins studded in them. One of the ways they decorate their cell walls with proteins is via an enzyme called Sortase. Sortase recognizes specific motifs in the C-terminus of native proteins and covalently attaches them to cell wall peptidoglycans. Many virulence factors in S. aureus and other gram-positive bugs are appended in this fashion.
Our work exploits this process to incorporate non-native small molecule. In particular, we made a set of peptides that were selectively incorporated into the S. aureus cell wall. So what you might be saying? Well this proof-of-concept work could lead to cool applications down the road. The obvious one for the Spiegel lab is antibody recruiting (For more on that go here), but there are other uses too. Studying cell wall dynamics was one thing that comes to mind. A synthetic biology application is another.There are some kinks to be worked out but there is a lot to go with this Sortase theme. And I'm sure whoever takes on the project in the future will do a great job and have a lot of fun.
Overall, I'm quite happy. I put in a lot of work last year in the Spiegel lab, and this is the payoff. I've been doing research since Sophomore year of undergrad, but for one reason or another, I could never make it far enough to get a publication. Not like getting a paper is everything. In fact, when I first started doing research, I remember my then-mentor Dr. Goroff saying, "So if we get some more data, we can write a paper." And I said to myself, "Oh a paper? For whom? Is there some kind of class I can write this up for?" I was so naive. I thought people just did research because they loved science. I knew people published, but I didn't realize it was the currency of academic science. I didn't realize careers are made or broken on them. And I certainly didn't realize that for some, publishing becomes the goal of science, not science itself.
I'm much less naive now (I hope).
So, I'm happy to have gotten over the publication hurdle, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to do the work that led to it. I learned a lot in the Spiegel lab, as much about people and politics as I did about S. aureus and antibody recruiting.
I know second authorship on a mid-level paper is small beans to some, but when you've never done it before, it's a big deal. It's funny though how our expectations change though. Probably sometime next week the euphoria will wear off and I'll begin dreaming of my first first-author paper, and then my own lab, and so on and so forth. It's good to dream big, no? I'm in med school for the time being, so the science endeavors will have to wait another year or two, but this has certainly put the wind back in my sails.
Anyway, time to get back to studying. Thanks for reading.
So a quick summary:
Gram-positive bacteria have complex cell walls with proteins studded in them. One of the ways they decorate their cell walls with proteins is via an enzyme called Sortase. Sortase recognizes specific motifs in the C-terminus of native proteins and covalently attaches them to cell wall peptidoglycans. Many virulence factors in S. aureus and other gram-positive bugs are appended in this fashion.
Our work exploits this process to incorporate non-native small molecule. In particular, we made a set of peptides that were selectively incorporated into the S. aureus cell wall. So what you might be saying? Well this proof-of-concept work could lead to cool applications down the road. The obvious one for the Spiegel lab is antibody recruiting (For more on that go here), but there are other uses too. Studying cell wall dynamics was one thing that comes to mind. A synthetic biology application is another.There are some kinks to be worked out but there is a lot to go with this Sortase theme. And I'm sure whoever takes on the project in the future will do a great job and have a lot of fun.
Overall, I'm quite happy. I put in a lot of work last year in the Spiegel lab, and this is the payoff. I've been doing research since Sophomore year of undergrad, but for one reason or another, I could never make it far enough to get a publication. Not like getting a paper is everything. In fact, when I first started doing research, I remember my then-mentor Dr. Goroff saying, "So if we get some more data, we can write a paper." And I said to myself, "Oh a paper? For whom? Is there some kind of class I can write this up for?" I was so naive. I thought people just did research because they loved science. I knew people published, but I didn't realize it was the currency of academic science. I didn't realize careers are made or broken on them. And I certainly didn't realize that for some, publishing becomes the goal of science, not science itself.
I'm much less naive now (I hope).
So, I'm happy to have gotten over the publication hurdle, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to do the work that led to it. I learned a lot in the Spiegel lab, as much about people and politics as I did about S. aureus and antibody recruiting.
I know second authorship on a mid-level paper is small beans to some, but when you've never done it before, it's a big deal. It's funny though how our expectations change though. Probably sometime next week the euphoria will wear off and I'll begin dreaming of my first first-author paper, and then my own lab, and so on and so forth. It's good to dream big, no? I'm in med school for the time being, so the science endeavors will have to wait another year or two, but this has certainly put the wind back in my sails.
Anyway, time to get back to studying. Thanks for reading.
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