Thanksgiving🎉
Sunday, November 23
154.7 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (6/6)
Big stretch for my back, shoulders from yoga, then our favorite at Bageletto (Mortadella & Burrata, easily top five open bagels of my life!). Went home and prepared my presentation all day. I literally stayed up until about 4 am and managed to finish. I am trying to kill my procrastination, still some problems, no more all-nighters😵
Monday, November 24
154.4 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (1/6)
I was supposed to present, but another presenter went over by more than an hour and a half, so mine was postponed. It might be better, since I will meet one of my committee members next week and can tighten my logic after getting feedback. After the group meeting I learned how to use the CytoFLEX in the Shokat lab. It is great to have our own flow cytometer, as the core charges about 120 dollars per hour! It is not for sorting, but it is enough to optimize induction conditions for my yeast surface library. Kept working on computational tasks, left work before 6 pm, then went to Costco to buy short ribs for galbijjim(갈비찜) on Thanksgiving. I did the dishes and cleaning, then fell asleep early to make up for the short sleep I had last night. I am really trying to protect my sleep after watching this video. I recommend treating sleep as something holy that you have to keep healthy and sustainable. I am trying too. Really.
Tuesday, November 25
153.6 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (2/6)
I spent the whole morning shipping our broken yeast-dedicated incubator to the vendor. The temperature control does not work, so we cannot test low-temperature induction below 30oC. The vendor is in North Carolina, so repairs will take time😵💫😮💨. However, I have an alternative approach to achieve the same goal, which I will bring up at tomorrow’s meeting with Bill and Kevan. In the afternoon I studied the assay for my thesis and joined a session led by a DeGrado lab graduate student about a new GPU platform we can borrow for protein design jobs. I do not need it right now, but having an alternative to Wynton is good. I ordered reagents for my assay, went home, did a quick run, and finished the day.
Wednesday, November 26
154.1 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (3/6)
I started a new collaboration with the Renslo lab, met a graduate student, and got a reagent for the experiment. Unfortunately, our protein prep failed and a postdoc and I both do not understand why. He needs to go back to China for visa issues, so I will restart from the beginning. I asked another postdoc to guide me and he kindly agreed to run experiments in parallel with mine. Before starting on Monday, I focused on computation and organized all my protein-prep notes. Today’s meeting with Bill and Kevan was canceled, so I spent the day on those tasks and refining my slides.
Thursday, November 27
153.2 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (4/6)
Thanksgiving👻 In the morning I ran 10 km with a Korean PhD friend in PSPG who is in the Shoichet lab. It was chilly, very refreshing. For lunch I made galbijjim(갈비찜). I asked an LLM for a recipe to optimize and it turned out great⭐️ I finally studied why meat becomes tender or tough under different conditions, so I felt confident. The dish was really good. We spent warm time together, I did a little work, then rested. Korea does not have a Thanksgiving-style holiday, it would be nice if we did. It is great to see people spend relaxed time with their loved ones.
Friday, November 28
154.1 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (5/6)
Workout, then I headed to lab late. To be honest, in the morning I spent some time on Black Friday clothes and shoes😅 I was deeply inspired by the Baker lab 2025 bioRxiv preprint “Accelerating protein design by scaling experimental characterization,” so I decided to introduce a similar approach. I outlined a tiered throughput system: very high throughput using yeast surface display, high throughput using 96-well expression as in the Baker protocol, medium throughput using twelve parallel expressions with conventional methods. If we can switch among these as needed, it will be powerful. During my PhD, I want to build the capability so that each can run smoothly. Neither lab has used this workflow yet, so I will likely do the heavy lifting, but I believe the efficiency will be worth it.
Saturday, November 29
153.3 lbs (from 152.5 lbs on Oct 26) | 🏃🏻 Done (6/6)
Refreshing workout, then lunch near the library (Magnin Street Cafe & Bistro had excellent hash browns). Unexpectedly, the library was closed, so I just went home and read the Baker lab paper, thinking through how to adapt it without using robotics, and I continued preparing my presentation. I hope I will breathe easier once the presentation is done.
