It was a busy day packed with all sorts of exciting science and personality.
Totally didn’t sleep well last night. Luckily the meeting started with works from Kolodkin and Engle labs that I’m quite familiar with. So that was a easy wake up transition for me.
A ton of circuit studies today. Aggression from Anderson, taste perception from Zuker, salt appetite from Palmiter, olfactory memory from Bargmann, and memory from Tonegawa. Not too many new stuff. No new technique. But still, good to hear them presenting in person.
The highlight of day, in my opinion, is work presented by Chris Chang at Berkeley on metal, particularly copper, as signaling molecules in the nervous system. There’re regions in the brain that are highly enriched in copper and they’ve devised imaging and other methods to visualize copper in real time and in response to different stimuli. Pharmacological perturbation of copper transport affects various aspects of normal neuronal function besides its crucial role as a redox center in metabolism. That opens up a lot of interesting directions. Copper is the new Calcium, in a way, if you have the right tools.
Had somewhat in-depth discussion with Walsh, Ecker and Axel. They seemed to have high praise about my work and be enthusiastic about a possible future. Pretty sure now that I’m going to line up an interview with Walsh. There’s a lot new initiatives and huge projects that get me really itchy and hooked up, and I could see, easily, a 10, 15 years of outlook stemmed from these projects.