Woke up at 6:50
Prepared avocado-egg-salad, half of it eat on black bread, half I left for Marischa
Watched 15 minutes morning news, about the dreadful stupid fights between Ukrainian military and Russian separatist
Went out with Ivo for a 15 minutes morning walk, realized that it is pretty cold but sunny
Gave food to Ivo
Jumped on the bike heading for work, taking with me the damaged rear wheel of Marischas bike
Cycling through the North of Munich, across the Isar river and through the English Garden
At the junction of Leopoldstreet and Neuherbergstreet, meet Mr. Osenberg, head of our Research Centers financial control department. He is a really small, slim and non-typical sport shape man. But on his bike, he is like a racer, like a grease lightning. Three minutes after we both start at the green traffic light, he is already about 500 m in front of me. I calculate he is about 20km/h faster than me.
Arrive at the institue, and take a shower (poor Mr.Osenberg once told me that they don’t have a shower over there at the administrative department. I’m proud to feel privileged as a researcher in this instance.
At my desk I check my e-mail. Two students, one from the Netherlands and one from Bulgaria confirm their participation on my lecture series. A professor Martazavi from Tehran also wants to participate, but needs a letter from me to apply for a German visa.
Went to the cell culture to check the mesenchymal stem cell cultures. Three out of 10 from last weeks explantations are bacterial infected. Have to sterilise those and discard.
But the remaining 7 cultures are clean and grow well.
Yashodhara comes to the cell culture room to tell me that Life Technologies have problems to continue supplying us with Stem Cell approved serum. I explain her to request from other suppliers ordinary bovine serum test samples, check them for growth potential on our cells, and just order a large badge of the best charge. As usual, Yasho expresses deep dissatisfaction, as if over there in her Indian home everything would be just perfect. Never had somebody in my group who is so unwilling to improvise or solve problems.
When I pass along the coffee room, I realize that Bahar has birthday today, and she is already arranging her cake. I feel ashamed, it happened what I was afraid of: that I might forget the birthday of my most reliable, most pleasant and most witty technician. I try her really delicious (and hallal) cake, and tell her that the present will arrive after lunch only.
Back to my office, I close the door behind me and start to write to Fatemeh, my friend so far in Tehran. I send her back one of the pictures showing the Afgani girl, after I added the IPCT tags according to Mrs. Tieth from Ullstein. I know I could write endless letters to Fatemeh, but have to stop here and wait for the evening, because Costanca enters. Once again, she is very nervous and plagued with doubts about the deadline for her master-project. I tell her that she shall focus the presentation of next week on the novel findings in telomerase regulation in mesenchymal stem cells, but not on the problems with low protein concentration of her samples. I tell that with all these worries she reminds me of Sherly Bassie (when Bassie was 50 years younger, of course). She starts to smile a bit, and again asks me why I address her with the polite German “Sie”, rather than with the familial form “Du”. I tell her that with all others we communicate in English, and there is no difference between a formal and this privat form of addressing a person. But in German, I use instinctively the official polite form for colleagues much younger or students.
I promise to organize some of the much-sought-after Amicon protein filtration tubes from another institute. Indeed, Ines from the Pathology institute gives me her entire storage of 14 tubes, which should make Costanza happy for tne next few days, untill our order from Merck is delivered. Next problem with Costanzas experiments is the missing master-mix for the Eliza assay. I call Roche Incs customer service to explain them our problem with master mix shortage. They promise to send some extra tubes free of charge.
Back from phone, I check the status of my submitted manuscript at the editorials office website. It is still of “under review” status (since 4 weeks).
I do the first outline for the manuscript on osteosarcoma, telomere alterations and the Rb1 gene and PML protein status. While reading through the recent publication from Sanger Centers ICGC group and what they called as Kataechis mutation spectrum I suddenly understand that this looks very similar to the AID hypermutations in B-cell lymphoma. I go to Jan to tell him about this possibility. As usual, he has never heard about this molecular process, and me (a physicist) have to explain to him (a biologist) all the basics of this essential process of immune development. As usual, he seems completely drowned in this mass of genome data, but is unable to bringe some sense in. I tell him that I will talk to Jean-Marie, who is a specialist in somatic hypermutation and kicked out from the research center 4 years ago, to find a way to determine if the cytosin point mutations in osteosarcoma are from dysregulated AID somatic hypermutation. I doubt that Jan understands the relevance of this possibility. But the head of his research unit is of similar weak scientific vision.
It is almost lunch time, and I remember that I have to buy a birthday buket for Bahar and bring Marishas bike wheel to the repair shop. So I jump on the bike and drive over the field towards Euro-Industrial-Center, the last 5 min through the abandoned military camp, which is now the camp for the asylum seekers. The security guards are liberal today and allow me to drive through this by-pass-road. At the bike shop, I buy a new rear wheel and the service guy changes the gear set from the old to the new one. Great, seems to have worked out.
On the way back, I feel that the pneu on my own bike is flat: I must have perforated it while drove over a sharp stone at the asylum-serkers camp. Walk back to the bike-shop, to exchange the pneu. This costs me another 20 min and my hands look dirty as pig. But finally, I can drive back to the institut. Stoping over at the the flowers shop, I find a beautiful buket of long, red-yellow roses.
Back to the instute, I can finally congratulate Bahar, and she is honestly amazed by the buket. I understand that it is a stupid stereotype that muslims don’t acknowledge flowers. Muslim or not, Bahar is really happy about the roses, and she askes all other peoples in the lab who has ever been given such flowers from the boss (I complain with her again about her addressing me her boss). I know that at the age of 32, Bahar is not completely free of worries regarding age. I tell that know, 12 years after she started working with me, she still looks the same, and this is a big compliment for her, considering that she got 2 kids meanwhile. And she says that indeed she still feels like an18 years old, but that she also never believed that I am 20 years her senior, in particular after we went recently to a couple of rock-concerts together. So we are a good team at work, we know how much we can trust each other and although so different educational and cultural background (muslim versus bloody atheist), we usually stick together like “tar and sulphur”. The only thing I disliked was that 8 years ago she stoped wearing a hijab.
So after another piece of her birthday cake, and with the buket, I told her to take the afternoon off to celebrate with her family.
The afternoon I went back to work on tne manuscript on the osteosarcoma hypermutation and our genome profiling. I found an older paper that claimed that osteosarcomas mutational spectrum indeed resembles somatic hypermutation, but for some unclear reason they suspect the gene APOBEC to be the underlying cause, rather than my hypothesis favoring AID. But AID would be more logical, since it is a DNA editing enzyme, rather than the RNA editing activity of APOBEC. But APOBEC is ubiqiously expressed in many tissues, whereas AID is restricted to lymphoid immune cells. But it could be that AID becomes ectopically expressed in the process of osteoblast transformation, and hence exerts its DNA editing activity to the entire genome, causing wide-spread hypermutation.
Suddenly Anna from Michas iPS stem cell group calls and says that tomorrow she will have differentiated cells from her ES and iPS models to give us for assaying telomerase activity. I tell Costanza that next day she should expect additional cell samples for her experiments. As expected, she wrinkles her brows showing her unease with this extra work.
At 4:30 p.m. I decide I had enough fullfilled my professional duties, and now want to go to the cinema to watch “Her”, a movie by Spike Jonze, featuring Joaquin Phoenix as a young man who falls in love with a computer OS. Since it is a love which mainly manifests itself as dialogues by computer chat, I thought it could explain a bit why I feel so much confidence with Fatemeh. But the movie is a sad story, and Theodore, the main character of the movie, is a poor victim of his fears and LA typical undecisiveness in terms of partnerships. So Samantha, the computer OS who he falls in love with, is programmed such that it behaves as the ideal girl of his dreams. So this virtual relationship is rediculous, whereas my attraction to Fatemeh is to a very real person, and objectively, we are very different, she a very creative artist, religious, and very open and positive about meeting and learning about new people every other day. Me, scientist, atheist or pantheist, and readily bored or pissed off as soon as I meet stereotypic people. But anyhow, there is a deep emitional and spiritual link between the two of us, and nothing in the world is currently so important for me as Fatemehs opinion about me. Since I lack any religious higher instance to judge my deeds and my person, I have choosen Fatemeh, whos words I rely so much.
The movie “Her” has nothing of this mutual trust. In the movie, Theodore simply needs a projection for his unfulfilled phantasies, but he does not really expects Samantha to challenge his concept of life.
After the movie is over, I drop in at Lehmkuhls bookstore to buy Wäis Kiani’s “Behind the Moon”, to give it to Nineliah for Eastern. On the way along the University Hospital I meet Birgit Luber, to hand her over the exam protocol and review of Sebastians master project. We chat a bit, and I remember the box of white chocolate pralines in my suit-case. And she is suprised to receive an Eastern present from me. But it feels nice to make unexpected gifts.
Arriving home, I realized that Ljowas has a friend visiting him at school holidays, and they are in his room, with the sun blinds completely turned down, and all lights inside switched on. This pisses me off, and I sneak silently into the house and down to the basement to pull the fuse to Ljowas room. After the two sit for a few seconds incomplete darkness, Ljowas comes down to check the fuse box in the basement. This is a good chance for me to scare him off, explain again my dissatisfaction with turning on the ekectric lights at daytime. Ljova says he met a mouse in his room. What has this to do with leaving on the electric light throughout the day?
Rest of the evening is as usuall: watching some international TV news, laughing about the ridiculous stupid Western comments and helpless attitudes of NATO officials with Marisha, having some simple sandwiches for dinner and going out for a walk with Ivo.
I hope that tonight the sky will be clear enough to make a photo of the full moon, as I wanted to send to Fatemeh.
It was a good day, with some ups and some downs, but the best moments where when I wrote the e-mail to Fatemeh. Maybe she has answered already.
Summary: It took me more than 3 hours to write this 4 page summary of today, what I did over an period of about 14 hours. It is nothing I will do on a regular base: 3 hours to write down what happend within 14 hours: thats not very efficient.
