User:Andy Maloney/Notebook/Lab Notebook of Andy Maloney/2009/04/13/Meeting with Koch

I will only post the highlights of the meeting. I can fill in details later if need be.

Highlights

• I learned that most of the questions I have about kinesin are answered in the literature. I guess I should feel good about being able to generate questions scientists 10 years ago felt necessary to answer. At any rate, I created a page that will house all these questions where I can answer them the more I read.
• Koch came up with the idea of genetically altering yeast so that we can make single isoform microtubules. Thankfully Cytoskeleton does sell them. Lots of experimental ideas for these expensive puppies.
• Koch thought that storing microtubules in a high osmotic pressure solution might stabilize them. I'm not entirely sure where he was coming up with this, but it's a good idea.
• Koch also thinks that using x-rays may "fix" microtubules like some of the chemicals used already. This is so ridiculously easy to do that it should be done.
• I learned that I need to look into how kinesin hydrolyses ATP and how ATP is used for a power stroke.
• Koch basically told me to read every Block paper that exists on kinesin and microtubules.
  • Steve Koch: Ha ha--well not right away, but it's definitely a good prioritization, since they are so good. Block lab has the PDFs on their web page (usually).
• I need to learn more about how microtubules are fixed.
• My feelings about legacies were reinforced today when I read a Block paper and they were describing kinesin as walking along a microtubule with its "heads". I hate silly legacies! Put current in the right direction and for (insert explicative) sake, call a kinesin foot a foot!

The meeting ended with me realizing I have a lot to read. I need to start understanding the field and get caught up with the literature so I'm not asking questions that have already been answered.

• Steve Koch: Somewhere you had a note about finding enzyme turnover (catalase, glucose oxidase). I am now reading on page 45 of that Parsegian, Rand, Rau review that they talk about this. Thus, we just need to look at what they have in that paper first!