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Thursday, September 20, 2007

Textbook Chapter

Lately I haven't had much to write about, as is clearly shown by the complete lack of content for the past month. I've been too busy to do much photography (I haven't even put up my most recent shots onto my web page)... but I have figured out some of what I'd like my blog to be, and I'm going to put some effort into breaking it up into two sections: photography and Grad School.

Of course, that will have to wait until I come back from my trip - oh, right - I don't think I mentioned I'll be in England, Scotland and Wales for about 10 days. This trip has been in the works for two years, so you can imagine that I've been looking forward to it... just a little bit. (-;

Anyhow, before I go, I have a few things to finish, once of which is a textbook chapter. I agreed to take this project on about a month ago, and since it's on an area in which I'm actively working, I thought it would be a good idea.

The topic of the chapter is a method or protocol called ChIP-Seq (or ChIPSeq, or ChIP-Solexa, or a few other things, actually), which is a combination of chromatin immunoprocipitation and a so-called "next-generation" sequencing technology. (If anyone wants to know more, send me a message, and I'll do a post on it.)

At any rate, when I was first approached about it, I was in the process of rewriting all of the production code that's being used to analyze the results - so I'm now intimately familiar with how that works. And, once that was done, I spent the next week doing a scholarship application, for which I had to do some lit review.. and finally this week, I got to working on the chapter.
I spent a few days reading, a day outlining, and a few hours here and there doing some writing. It's slow work, to be honest, but it's getting there.

The funny part is that I found a great paper yesterday, that would have pointed me to the right place, and has a great introduction. Where did I find it, you ask? On my desk. I've had it for about 2 months - it's the paper on ChIP-Seq written by the guy who sits across the cubicle wall from me.

Anyhow, That's life. Now I just need to sit down and write like mad - I'd like to get a draft out before my vacation starts.

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