August 2012

Olympic fever is finally dying down in London and things are getting back to something resembling normality in the lab after a busy old summer.

Rosie finished off her MRes project with us and she’s gone on to a PhD in the Keck lab.  There she’ll continue her interest in all things plastic, and hopefully add some extra data to the interesting results she already produced with us.  And as part of the reciprocal GrubbLab-KeckLab exchange programme we’ve now got Adna back after her spiny summer sabattical.  She’s starting a PhD in collaboration with Martin Meyer’s lab, looking at AISs in zebrafish – a really exciting new direction for us.

We’ve also had two week-long work experience students learning about neuroscience in London; what’s more, both Eleanor and Grace managed to produce useful data in their short time here.  Not the most accurate reflection of normal scientific progress, but at least we haven’t put them off for good…

Finally, the traditional Grubb Lab summer party went non-traditionally barbeque-free – we ate loads of chilli and delicious guacamole on Matt’s temporary riverside balcony instead.  Oh, and believe it or not we’re still waiting on Mark’s sausages.

April 2012

Transition time in the lab right now.  Adna, Rob and Tom all did a grand job of polishing off their respective projects this month, having all produced some really useful data.  Thanks guys!  But we’re not quite down to a skeleton crew because Rosie just joined us on an MRes rotation on synaptic scaling.  She’s got mini recordings already, so things are looking good…

Of the more permanent lab members, Matt went to Goettingen recently to visit Andreas Neef’s lab, giving a talk, getting his hands dirty in the lab and talking a lot of extremely interesting theoretically-biased action potential biology.  Hopefully there might just be some fruitful collaborations there in the future.

Back in London, Annisa’s been working hard at taking her in vitro findings in vivo, while Mark’s still grappling with signalling pathways.  The biggest news, though, is the sausage-making kit we got Mark for his birthday (pictures to follow soon!) – we’re expecting gourmet butties very very soon…