Random Musings

This is my blog-night. I do not have anything in mind to write about. When I took the resolution of writing one blog per week, I did anticipate many such occassions. But never planned a strategy to get over it.  One possibility is polishing some old stories that I left unfinished in the past. I revisited a number of them today. There are several interesting write-ups I started but never got a chance to finish. There were several interesting ones; I wish I had finished then and there. Because some of them lost its relevance now and in some cases I cannot trace back my chain of thoughts.

For instance, I used to keep a journal of my marathon practice. It happened in 2010 (I don’t even remember if it was in 2009 or 2010). It was an important decision. I am not a born runner. I used to run once in a while in early 2000’s. But never took it as a routine. But I lived in an isolated but very beautiful residence facility in Research Park close to San Antonio, TX. A and myself loved this place. It has a 2-mile road and also nature trail, which was absolutely fabulous to run. I should say that the research park motivated me to run. Anyway, it almost became a routine and I eventually decided to complete a half-Marathon. It was a big challenge I posed to myself and therefore to track my progress I decided to keep a journal. Although I was pretty regular in marathon practice and finished my 13.1 miles after over coming several physical challenges, I failed in keeping a good journal about my practice. But I have written a number of them. Reading them after these years brought back several memories in me, mostly good ones.

Writing journal is said to be a good practice. I have started it a number of times but never carried it through. The problem is I would write down only stressful events and memories and after a while when I read them again, I would feel embarrassed and would trash my journal. But it would be a good practice for young children. Children usually have only good memories, at least in early years, hence it would be good time to introduce them to writing diary. I do not think it should be just logging in every deeds and details of a day. It’s about what is the overall experience one had in a day. New thoughts, knowledge, experiences and things like that and most importantly the wisdom learned and mistake not to be repeated. May be its not too late for me start it again. Naah, I think its too late for me. I am struggling to keep my lab notebook up to date. How can I find time for personal journal? I think this weekly blog should keep me busy and train me on writing. So, what is the new experience and wisdom I earned this week? asked the skeptic.

I learned that non-human primates (NHP) have more genetic diversity than human counter parts, at least during early stages of development by listening to Dr. Gage’s talk. Apparently the machinery that actively suppresses the retro-transposition of LINE elements (one of the causes of such diversity) is more active in humans compared to NHP. But is it true at organismal level? Probably not. These events are responsible for the somatic mosaicism seen in equal extend both in humans and NHPs (somatic mosaicism are an interesting topic for future discussion, apparently all the cells in our own body need not have same genetic composition). And what is the implication in terms of biology, evolution? Does it means NHP has a higher mutation rate, and therefor higher probability for evolution? Does it have any health implications? I also listened to another talk (don’t want to mention the name, I hope I will remember who it is after a while). It taught me the need for having a very well defined question in research. One question and all the experiments should be to test that idea. If you change your experimental strategy according to the whims of other people or based on recent technologies, research can be a never ending and frustrating process.  And thus I conclude another weeks blog by putting down a wisdom I just learned, there is always something to write about because we are all learning something new all the time!