One of the great things about this time of year is touching base with friends in distant places, and getting a chance to catch up on everyone's life. In honor of the ritual, here's a recap on my life in 2010.
Work's been great. In an economy where lots of people are struggling to find a job, I've got two, and love them both. I spend half my time in the Ares lab, where I research alternative splicing, especially relating to myotonic dystrophy (the most common form of muscular dystrophy). Myotonic dystrophy currently has no cure, but there are some hopeful developments. Our collaborator Charles Thornton is developing a treatment that looks very promising in mice, and hopes to start clinical trials in humans soon. We're developing a biomarker test to indicate when it's time for myotonic dystrophy patients to start treatment - work funded by a grant brought in by yours truly, I'm proud to say! Stay tuned for more news.I spend the other half of my time with the UCSC Genome Bioinformatics group, working on genome annotation and on the ENCODE project. For non-scientists, ENCODE is a huge consortium project with a goal of identifying all of the functional pieces of the human genome.
It's already produced some mind-boggling discoveries, as well as terabytes of amazing, publicly-available data. I do a lot of outreach, telling other scientists about the data and urging them to use it, which come straight from the heart. Overall, I feel like my work is engaging and valuable, and it still leaves me with time for my other passions, such as mountain biking, telemark skiing, and travel. This year, I've been enjoying all of them.
This year's travel highlight was a three-week jaunt that took in two continents, four countries, and one scientific meeting. I started by flying to St. Thomas, where I met Jorge and several of his old friends for a week-long sailboat charter around the Virgin Islands. The white sand beaches and turquoise waters were worthy of credit card ads. When I'd go snorkeling, I saw the sort of sea critters that one normally doesn't see anywhere but in a store window, but these were in the water and alive. Then, we got back to St. Thomas, and I learned a hard lesson about iPhone apps. Little did I realize that when I switched time zones, my calendar app was moving the times of all of my appointments to keep them at the same absolute time. I finally learned this when I went to the airport two hours early to check in for a flight that had left one hour before I got there. So, I had one more night in St. Thomas, and even though it was sort of expensive, no one pitied me!
Eventually, I made it to Barcelona, where I visited Andy and had a few days to soak up the city with Rachel before our ENCODE meeting. This meeting location was one of my favorites so far: in the Center for Genomic Regulation, a gorgeous building right next to the beach, with a jaw-dropping views everywhere. The one disappointment was that the meeting gala dinner, at a gorgeous historic observatory in the hills outside of Barcelona, conflicted with Andy's beach volleyball championship!
From Barcelona, I flew up to Paris - and made it in spite of a massive air traffic control strike that day (Vive la France!). In Paris, I saw the 2010 installation of Paris Plage, where every year an expressway along the Seine is closed and transformed into a makeshift beach resort, always an amazing sight to see. I got to visit with several friends, which included a great weekend in the countryside with Hank and Lucienne.
Back in Santa Cruz, I still live in the great townhouse that I bought two years ago. Everyone who visits is impressed with the garden, shown from my front door (credit: my neighbor Ray Sherrod). I'm impressed with my neighbors! In a complex of five households, we have five congenial, cooperative sets of neighbors, if you count me. Six if you count our great new next-door neighbors Carrie and JP.And I still share my house with my cat Neige, in spite of everything! Last year, six weeks before we were due to leave for two months in South America, Neige was diagnosed with Vaccine-Associated Sarcoma (VAS). It turns out that whenever you get your cat vaccinated, your cat runs the risk of getting a nasty, aggressive cancer. Like breast cancer, the "best" treatment for VAS is aggressive surgery, i.e. the loss of a body part that one can survive without. In this case, it's a leg.
This is an excruciating step for a pet owner to take, and I couldn't have done it without the help of the VAS Support Group (one of the wonders of the internet: no matter what unusual stress you're up against, you can find the advice of others who've been through it). Neige no longer has her left rear leg, but she's still the same cheerful, affectionate cat as before, and still gets along very well. She can run as fast as before. And when a neighbor's dog got too close, he learned that she's still a fierce fighter, even against an animal six times her size! (Sorry, Jack - it was nothing personal). She's been in remission for just over a year, and her oncologist is "cautiously optimistic". Oh yeah, and Jorge and I are both in good health too.
Happy holidays, and many wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2011!
