To do list

Last night's post began to list the things I need to get done in the next ~6 months. I'll try to elaborate on it now, adding other goals.

Finish and submit the US-variation manuscript: This is the only manuscript we have in the works right now (except one on teaching that's fallen by the wayside). Hmmm, that in itself is probably a cause for concern.

Write the NIH proposal: Now that NIH has cut its proposal page limit to 12 pages, including figures but not references (?), perhaps we can just revise (and revise and revise) the 10-page proposal the post-doc submitted for his fellowship application. Yesterday I discovered that HERRO, the UBC group that supports research in the health sciences, is offering a half-day workshop on writing NIH grants at the end of the month. They don't seem to have advertised this to the UBC community, just announced it on their web page, but a colleague and I tracked it down and signed up.

Get preliminary data for the NIH proposal: The proposal has 3 (or maybe 4) parts, each consisting of sequencing specific very diverse DNA samples we've purified from transformed cells. For the first and third of these parts we can do a small-scale experiment to show that the components all work, if necessary doing the preliminary sequencing by conventional methods rather than Illumina. The second part is the most difficult, but we should be able to get preliminary data there too.

Get more preliminary data for the CIHR proposal: This will be critical if this proposal is rejected. The first part of this proposal is the same as the first part of the NIH proposal, so that new data will do double duty. But we also need more data for the second part, making and analyzing mutants and testing candidate DNA-binding proteins, and for the third part, optical tweezers measurements and studies of USS conformation and flexibility. The optical tweezers part is the most risky but that makes it the one most in need of evidence that it can be done. It's also my own project and I want to get started having fun with it soon.