Here some of the figures of my grant.

Zinc fingers is typically a domain of about 60 amino acids that fold around one or more zinc ions and is found in over 400 eukaryotic proteins, many of which are involved in the regulation of gene expression and in the maintenance of chromatin structure. Zinc fingers typically show a C4HC3 signature (four cysteines, one histidine, three cysteines) with characteristic cysteine spacing and with additional conserved residues, most notably a tryptophan or other aromatic amino acid preceding the final cysteine pair. Studies have suggested a role for zinc fingers as nucleosome interaction determinants. However their functions are still elusive and controversial, as a variety of functions have been suggested, including phosphoinositide binding and E3 ubiquitin ligase activity. In addition to their role as a DNA-binding module,  zinc finger have been shown to mediate protein-protein and protein-lipid interactions as well.

What about the electrostatic surface properties of zinc-finger domains? Here an example with the models of the 4 zinc-fingers of one of the histone methyl-transferase I’m working on. On the figures, blue is positively charged, and red is negative. The large positive (blue) area will bind to the DNA. But, on the other face, there is room for binding to some positively charged partners. Fascinating!

The climb to cruising altitude was really smooth, thanks to the temperature inversion. However the downside of a temperature inversion is bad to poor visibility of such air masses. After few minutes I was overflying Winters and decided to head north for a little while. No other aircrafts were around me and the radio was quiet. Perfect!

After some time, I headed back to Davis and started my descent while turning over Winters. I overflew KEDU at 1600ft then descended a bit to 1400ft to stay underneath SMF airspace. After few moments of flying south Davis, I overflew the city to take some photos of downtown Davis. Not easy to fly with one hand and take pictures with the other.

As usual I had a great time. I can’t get enough of that!

What happened to Chang et al., is that they were working with some wrong electron density maps because of a gross error made early-on during the project pipeline. The culprit was an in-house data reduction program that switched critical column of data. Because of this error, they build/trace various proteins with the “wrong” hand.

Brian Matthews commentary is a solid X-ray crystallography 101 lesson. A lot have been said and written about Chang et al. mistake and their consequences. But, Brian Matthews point out that nowadays we are seeing an ever-increasing use of “black-box” procedures for structure determinations. The rapid development of easy to use X-ray crystallography softwares along with massive computing power render the structure determination fairly easy for one with limited X-ray crystallography knowledge. Solving a structure can be fairly straightforward but it can easily become a tricky task. In any cases but especially in tricky cases, one needs to be extremely cautious about the validity of the maps. Brian Matthews gave us a great lesson about the various checking we all should do when dealing with problems encountered by Chang et al.

X-ray crystallography is like anything else, it is an art. It requires experience, failures, learning from failures and constant knowledge update. Like everything else in Science, it is a grave mistake to assume that we master all the whereabouts of a technology/methodology. I guess, Chang et al. learnt it the hard way. However it raises another question: Shall we seek advice from a peer to help solving a problem in case of dealing with a very hot project? All the 5 retracted papers were all hot projects…

The take home message from this is to be über-cautious and don’t take nice looking maps for granted…

Already 40 years…already 40 years that what is perhaps the greatest achievement of mankind, led to having the very first earthling fooling around on the moon. It was the ultimate achievement of one entire nation fulfilling J.F Kennedy promise back in 1961. A 3 stage-programs (Mercury, Gemini and Apollo) and billions of dollars spend, led not only to having men on the moon but also great scientific progress and to an extraordinary technological leap forward, skyrocketing the entire world into today’s reality. We can thank the cold war for fuelling a frantic space race between the USA and USSR. But the legacy of such space race is massive and everywhere in our today’s life.  Going to space and to the moon required a handful of technology that we didn’t have. Where to start?  The benefits of the space program are virtually everywhere.  For instance, home insulation, cordless power tools appliances, LED light, laser, lightning protection, shades, robotic, portable breathing system among many others. UNIX is also a spinoff of the space program.

Most of all, the space program and the most of all the lunar explorations by Apollo 11 to 17 (except 13) provides an extraordinary reservoir of dreams for billions of earthlings…for decades. Which kid doesn’t want to be an astronaut as some point? Which one of us didn’t say  ”I wish it was me on that freaking Space shuttle even if I have to throw-up during the 15 days of the mission? right?

As for myself, that brings me to get an airplane pilot license and to apply to the European Space Agency astronaut selection program in June ’08. Luckily, I got selected and I touched for a little bit of what being an astronaut could be while having my butt kicked during the tests in Germany.

Apollo 11 Landing anniversary must remind us that we should not stop investing in great and ambitious programs such as the space exploration. On another level, the Concorde program brought many technical achievement that are not only in use in all nowadays airliners but in all vehicles, computers, etc…. Just as a reminder, at the time of the Concorde program, only very few military aircraft were able to sustain mach 2+. Concorde was able to comfortably cruise at mach 2.02 for 2+ hours at 60.000ft…advanced military aircraft territory.

To realize how great it was, let’s imagine that the mighty SR-71 blackbird was probably the only aircraft able to overtake the Concorde during a transatlantic crossing without refueling. The legend wants that one day somewhere over the Atlantic an SR-71 blackbird flying at mach 3 was overtaking a Concorde cruising below at mach 2. The crew of the blackbird suddenly realized that they were sweaty, tired and strapped in a rather uncomfortable space-suit, breathing cold and dry oxygen while just below, 100 passengers flying at twice the speed of sound, where having foie gras, caviars and delicious Champagne…In a similar manner of the Apollo program France and UK spend billions to make Concorde a reality.

As today’s economy is going side-ways, it is the time to massively invest in very ambitious programs during the coming years. Tomorrow’s world will thank us later.

The battery of our fancy HDD camcorder ran out of juice in the middle of the show….here the grand finale shot with my iPhone. Not too shabby isn’t?

Saturday June 6th, we had the annual spot landing and flour bombing contest at the University airport in Davis (KEDU). It was a lot of fun! This year I flew the C152 N24774 with Jackie as a bomber. Masayo was on the ground filming everything. The flour bombing rules are simple: be the closest to the target (a white circle of ~10 meters in diameter) drawn right in the middle of the runway/taxiway, fly no lower than 600ft, no slower than 80Kts (~92MPH). For the landing contest the rules are also simple : land the closest to a specific mark. To make it more difficult it has to be done without power meaning that while midfield parallel to the runway at 900ft the power has be set to idle and then glide to the mark with two 90 degrees left turn and no slip for landing. That’s tricky and a lot of fun to do.

We didn’t do well on the bombing, but oh well! who cares? We had a lot of fun flying this day. Then, after a quick BBQ, Masayo Jackie and I went for a flight above the Lake Berryessa with the C172 N4634D. We climbed to 6500ft to fully enjoy the scenery. The view was stunning up-there… and we were flying among clouds: priceless!  What a great day of flying.