GradGrrl

PLUS batman has a successor....Batman Beyond!!! HUH!!

LOL...get out of here! He's got TECHNOLOGY MAN! A Batcar, Batcave, Batgrrl!! Batarang, Batcycle, Batcomputer, Batbaseball...errr never mind that one. Plus batman has lost his softer side in last couple decades. He's moody now.

Take a lot of physics.

So he did have an in class question. Good news, I got it right. Something about j-coupling and the difference in signal between alpha helices and beta sheets. Another part about T2 relaxation. I totally missed the microscope question, how to measure conformational change inside a cell in real time. All I could remember was FRET, but I know that wasn't it. Then he asked for a design of the "necessary equipment" needed to get it to work???? WTF? I'm not microscope expert...that's why we PAY him to do the samples??? Right?? Missed the 5 things fibronectin and laminin have in common too. Jerk. Mr. immunology asked a dumb question about a protein he never even talked about. Ass. If you have to know one thing about basic immunology in a molecular context, you'd think he ask about Rag1 and Rag2. But NOooooooo. Ttd, or tdt, whatever it was. Missed it. But NMR...no I got that right. I knew that helices were 4-5 mhz and beta sheets were 9-12...but ECM proteins - way over my head.... Just ranting...don't feel obligated to answer my pity party.

I found every test but that one:-( Thanks anyway though.

I think the main points were are suppossed to recognize are: How to determine structural differences in a biological sample using the spectrum. We will most likely have to interpret a small spectrum on the take home portion of the exam, but for the in-class portion, I would expect him to ask how J-coupling or NOE's would help determine structure...as well as relaxation, but I think I have releaxation down. Those are the 2 questions I missed last fall when I took the class exam. He was a really hard grader too, but they are suppossed to be very general main ideas on the in-class Qualifying Exam, and not specific.

So here is the really ironic part of this whole thing...we just started a big NMR project in lab, but we just send out our samples to the CORE facility and they send back the results! I read a little more on it and I think I'll be OK, there will be one question on the in-calss portion of my quals, one stinkin question and I have to know it all just in case...Thanks you guys for the help!

Yeah ...all good guesses. As you can tell, I'm no expert either, just have qualifying exams tomorrow and would like to actually understand the stuff I memorized for this part of the exam. NMR deals with nuclear spin on a molecule, and you can deduce structural somponents using the technique, so the j-coupling and the nuclear overhauser effects, NOE's, are two ways to determine structural differences. i just hope I don't have to read a spectrum tomorrow, or I'm in deep shit.

Does anyone here "get" NMR? Can you explain J-coupling and NOE's? I get that j-coupling is through bond interactions, but what does that mean? And I get that NOE's are through space interactions, how are they different? And ok, if you can get me that far, can you break down the proton and carbon methods in "simple" language. Any help is appreciated!

The Young Scientist's Club looks cool. We're gonna subscribe at the end of the summer. I'll let you know how it is. http://www.theyoungscientistsclub.com/introduction2.html

You're funny! :D

I'm all for it. I homeschool my son and I plan on introducing him to my lab next year...Mwoaaaa Haaa Haa Ha J/K But like most people, science is fun when it does something cool. Remember growing carbon backbones in chem 101? Or that one enzyme reaction where you mix H2O2 with something else to get that big foamy mountain? When I took O chem, I sucked at it big time, but that lab was THE funnest class I ever took. Hooking up all that glassware and sucking powder out of liquid!! :D SO FUN!!! Making eugenol and spilling it all over the jerk in the next hood, not to mention getting my whole row tipsy because I dropped so much hexane. Just good clean fun...minus the clean. And I actually asked the TA if we could do that sodium explosion. He took it with him when he left to use the bathroom. Guess he didn't trust me.

Sheesh, even adults can appreciate an explosion! Who hasn't wanted to throw that soduim into a bucket of water?