Farncombe
Phage

The lab entry in the BGSA Halloween Costume - Inside Out 3: Graduate School Edition. We had a script, a performance, a pre-recorded contribution by Gayatri - who couldn’t make it. I thought the best gag was going to be Anxiety being imposter syndrome, and “Fulfilment” just being an older, white-haired version of Imposter Syndrome. Maybe sadness popping the p=0.049 balloon and replacing it with a p=0.051 balloon. But really, the red button being “give up” and the green button being “another replicate” - that… chef’s kiss.

Left to Right: Imposter Syndrome Sr, Jr, Sadness, Joy, Disgust, Embarrassment, Anger. Not pictured: Parental Pressure (Gayatri).

In a heated Halloween Pumpkin contest, we took Superman (and Crypto) to a podium finish - the Jays-themed Brown lab snuck in a win, but that might just be the judges trying to manifest tonight’s result. It’s not just the result, though - I think this was a first ever time carving a pumpkin for both Niousha and Aeysha Ahktar - pictured after the jump.

We managed to gather all the lab not headed away for Thanksgiving for a chill walk ‘round Christie Lake, joined by all the wee-ist ones. I actually, I thought we’d be just walking the the dam and back, but Gayatri seemed game for everyone getting their steps in, as she hauled everyone’s stuff and her baby in the stroller. The weather was fantastic. The photographers… less so. But we did catch a few other nice moments, including (click through).

With Félix back in town for a friend’s defence yesterday, we took advantage of the opportunity to gather and celebrate his paper (out in mSphere last week). We have done Lunches, Suppers… Snacks, but never Breakfast’s before. I guess next is midnight snack? As an additional treat, Gayatri dropped by, and we got to hear all about her little one.

It was a great day for the Hynes lab. In my bike ride to the annual Farncombe Research Day at the Beautiful Botanical gardens, I managed to make it up that insane hill without dismounting. A group published a paper that builds on our work and really inspired me. Ayesha (pictured) gave a great talk closing off the morning session, with an entirely new pitch I am definitely going to steal. Gayatri and Rabia were recognized for their leadership and contributions to the Farncombe (click through for picture), and Rabia picked up an award for her poster too! Oh, not to mention all the great science on display I got to ask questions about…

The lab’s longest-running story, I thought it was one good experiment from ready about 8 months into the lab’s tenure… but this one was a lesson in the importance of readily falsifiable hypotheses. We had one we liked so much - it fit perfectly. We knew eDNA mattered. We knew it had to be phage eDNA… but we were convinced that meant it had to serve as the source of the immunological memory (the spacers). It was only through flipping the story on its head and genuinely assuming we were wrong that Felix was able to wrap this one up, and so today’s publication feels like a particularly momentous one - great science, disseminated, but also an important lesson for this particular PI…

While I celebrated labour day by grant writing, Gayatri was busy celebrating the day by… going into labour. Welcome to the world, little one, and congratulations Gayatri! Pretty much guaranteed to be the lab’s biggest news of the year. Oh, at it might be worth noting that she also got an award for best talk (in absentia) for her RIP talk in last year’s series. I imagine that’s not high on her list of memorable things about the week though…

A little lab cleanup, with some new and returning faces. It’s the start-of-semester tradition that gets us off on the right foot, followed by - of course - boot camp over the next three days.

This shot, as you can probably tell, did not take place today. Rabia’s June Convocation was my third opportunity to hood a PhD graduate (second day wearing the Wizard Robes) - but I’ve been waiting for these pictures for a while, and finally get to show them off - there’s another one after the jump. Belated online congratulations to Dr. Fatima!

I rarely show data in the pictures on this site… but this one speaks for itself. Well, I’ll still speak to it, though - Rabia’s latestpaper (today in mBio - click HERE) is, in part, the answer to the “yeah, but do you really think it’ll work in vivo?” question we get after every talk. But it’s more than that - it’s mechanistic insight, and raises a few really interesting questions about Phage Therapy that… well, suffice it to say they’re the subject of a grant I’m writing right now.