Another test

I am not nearly as Glib as Mr. Tech with the H T M Ls, so I'll bury the "messing around with blogger stuff" in this early, soon-to-be-archieved post. I wanted to give a shot at linking to my Picasa albums. Here are my collection of future award winning photos, featuring just some of the star players of my memoir "Home is not so far." Please direct comments toward the casting of the screen play. I haven't decided if I should be played by Angelina Jolie of Penelope Cruz.

http://picasaweb.google.com/sandlin.preecs

Since this is also an obvious distraction from the task at hand- Defend my Comprehensive Exam, I'll also include a little update on what I am doing. I hope this helps to explain why I sometimes forget about things like groceries, and lunch.

My abstract:

Although understanding of programmed cell death has advanced greatly since the initial studies by Kerr et al (1), continued study suggests that there may be yet more intracellular communication regulating various cell stresses. Specifically, the evidence that the ER and lysosome can regulate cell death (2) suggests that other organelles may also be able to sense stress. The recent discovery of a Golgi protein that regulates cell death, Golgi Associated Anti-Apoptotic Protein (GAAP) (3) may confirm the link between the Golgi and cell death. GAAP is also a virulence factor expressed by Vaccinia Virus, but very little is known about its specific role in cell death. The goal of this proposal is to characterize the role of GAAP in cell death. In Aim 1, the role of the viral encoded GAAP and the cellular targeting of the viral and endogenous protein are explored using immunofluorescence and knockdown to determine the importance of localization to function. In Aim 2, the specific role that GAAP plays in regulating cell death will be explored by knockdown and overexpression of GAAP. In Aim 3, interaction partners will be described through a split-ubiquitin yeast two hybrid screen. Verification of these interactions by co-immunoprecipitation and characterization of a functional role by simultaneous knockdown will provide future targets for the study of GAAP’s pro-survival activity.

Yeah, I know, really fascinating stuff. If you want the other 21 pages of page turning delight, I'd be happy to distribute, provided I get a cut of any grants funded via my inspiration.

Still gonna have to work through the dashboard I think....
S