Article about my project in "Forskerforum"

Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you that an article about my research has been published in the Journal for the members of the The Norwegian Association of Researchers (NAR) , "Forskerforum". In an interview with my PhD student Kjersti Lian they are describing our interest in studying the DNA repair systems in Deinococcus radiodurans :-) Read the whole article here (page 26-28)! Kjersti, thank you for your effort!!!







Travelling, holidays and new techniques

In the end of July I went to Grenoble, to visit my PhD student who at the time was working in the lab of Dr. Joanna Timmins at the Institut de Biologie Structurale (IBS). I had two good days there, discussing the last results and making plans for the last six months of the project. It is always good to come to Grenoble. I have been a visitor in the Structural Biology Group at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) a couple of times, so it's almost like coming home:-)

In August, I went on holidays...... in Portugal. It is really a wonderful country, which has so many interesting places to visit. This time I went to Caramulo, a small town in the centre of the country, relatively close to Viseu. Even though it is a very small place it has a very nice museum, Museu do Caramulo, with a big art and car collection - not the kind of museum you expect to find in a small place like this. Other than the museum, the place the ideal for hiking, and resting :-) The landscape in this region it very beautiful and I'm definitely going back there - but then also spending time visiting the Dão wineries!!!

Ok, back to work I went to Norway, to visit my old lab at the University of Tromsø. It was nice to be back, to meet my old colleagues and friends again. I had meetings with my PhD students, and other collaborators to discuss manuscripts which is almost ready for submission :-)

In between all this travelling, we have prepared more protein samples for a new EPR experiment which will take place in October. We also had meetings with the head of the Raman Spectroscopy group here at the ITQB, Smilja Todorovic, in order to discuss the possibility of doing some experiments with my proteins. Raman spectroscopy seems very complicated to me, and they need very concentrated samples for the analysis (~ 30 mg/ml - fortunately only 2 µl), but it will give us more information about the state and nature of the metal centres of my proteins which is one of the main goals of the project. I think now I’m really benefitting from performing my project a multidisciplinary institute, having the luxury of just going up one floor to find a fully equipped Raman spectroscopy lab and all the expertise you need to get the experiment done and the results analysed. I really look forward to learn more about this technique.

And next week I'll finally start learning the Portuguese language at the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. It will be a busy autumn :-)