[Editor’s note: another guest blogger has joined our team…]

Posted on behalf of Sugar Daddy:

I guess Sugar Daddy is a somewhat ironic nickname, as I am a graduate student, and my friends make anywhere from 2- to 5-fold more money than I do in the so-called “real world,” which I hope (for their sake) is nothing like the MTV reality TV show of the same name. But I do work with carbohydrates, so maybe we should just roll with it.

Anyway, I am in my fourth year of a PhD program working in a chemical biology lab. My research involves the proverbial “little bit of synthesis, little bit of biology,” and things have been going well. I guess you could say I’m living the chemical biology dream: synthesize a molecule, show that it has biological activity in cells, and then take it all the way to a living organism.

This week, I’ve been simultaneously thinking about the past and the future. It is recruiting season in our department, and therefore many wide-eyed first-year students are showing up asking to be told about the research projects in my lab. As I describe my work, which I can more or less do on autopilot, I start to reminisce about what it was like to be a first-year student – how random all the decisions I made then seem in hindsight. Did I choose my school because I “had a better gut feeling” about it? No, I tell myself, it was because I liked the students and professors I had met, and of course the research interested me the most as compared to other schools. And why did I pick this lab? Did I pick my project or was I gently nudged toward it? No complaints, but how much did I really know about what I was getting myself into at any stage of the game? Was I delusional, thinking that I had complete control over my scientific destiny, at least on the five-year timescale? As the saying goes, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

And speaking of “as sayings go,” the whole autopilot experience (of describing my project without really having to think too hard about what to say) reminds me of a moment in high school (where we really were naïve, that’s for sure), and specifically in English class. My teacher had us read “Politics and the English Language,” a 1946 essay by George Orwell about how the English language had deteriorated to the point that people merely strung together short familiar fragments rather than construct novel phrases and ideas. I think this essay should be required reading for every scientist, or at least those that will ever have to write a paper, book, or grant proposal. Okay, for the next first-year that shows up, I’m going to describe my project in a completely novel, illuminating way. Ugh, that certainly feels like it’ll be an endothermic process.

So, that was the thinking about the past. How about the future? A post-doc is on the horizon. (There, by the way, is Orwell’s thesis in action.) More on that next time. With all this thought about the past and the future, I suppose that doesn’t leave much time for the present. Guess I’ll wait until tomorrow to HPLC that compound…

Indigenous animals are dying out as commercial breeds sweep the world.

Many of the world’s indigenous livestock breeds are in danger of dying out as commercial breeds take over, according to a worldwide inventory of animal diversity. Their extinction would mean the loss of genetic resources that help animals overcome disease and drought, particularly in the developing world, say livestock experts.

Read the story here.