Beehives and Protein

Well, we figured that we should add a new post since it has been over a month. I was just about to write that not much has changed since the last post, but Betsy reminded me of two big things. First, Betsy received a new calling (and of course readily accepted) to serve as the Beehive Advisor in our ward. She is very excited to be in Young Women's again. I am really impressed with the way she has jumped in with both feet into her new responsibilities. She has been preparing her lesson for two weeks now and still doesn't teach for two more weeks. (I teach Sunday School every week and don't prepare until Sunday morning.) She now goes to Mutual every Wednesday night and is enjoying it. They are preparing for a Road Show right now and are having fun with the Grinch theme. All the kids gasped when they found out they had to say "WHO-Hell" during the performance. Don't worry though, the use of the word Hell was "approved" by a member of the bishopric.

The second big thing in our life is my new job. I am a Lab Technician in the Christopher Hill Lab up in the Biochemistry department at the University of Utah. My job is to purify protein and to put it in trays under all sorts of different conditions to try and get it crystallize. The picture above is what I spend a lot of my day looking at under a microscope. Once we get the protein to crystallize we take a little itty bitty loop and loop up the crystal, once the crystal is in the loop we shove it really quickly into liquid nitrogen to freeze it. We then take the frozen crystal to the X-ray diffraction machine. X-rays are shot through the crystal and a machine shows us its diffraction pattern. From the diffraction pattern of a protein, the structure of that protein can be deduced and when the structure is known we can find out how that protein works. I just realized how boring this must be to most of you, so enough about protein. Betsy tells me everyday that I am a nerd, and I continue to prove it.