There was a very nice piece in yesterday’s Nature by Ananyo Bhattacharya (a former PhD student of mine who now works for the journal). Ananyo discusses the current structural ‘wish list’ with some of the world’s most ambitious protein crystallographers. Perhaps I’m a little biased but I think it’s beautifully written.

When I was a little boy I remember that my mother would sometimes extract a dull metal implement from the dark recess of a rarely used cupboard and clamp it to the kitchen table. Turning the handle she would feed the device with cubes of beef and it would spew mince onto a cold white plate. This is what my brain feels like. I have read fourteen grant applications in the past few days in preparation for an upcoming funding committee meeting.

I should have done this a long time ago but I was too proud. I think I need to review. In 2002 Dan Carter published a paper in BBRC describing the crystal structure of the protein, human serum albumin, complexed with hemin.

Today I finally made it to the Darwin Big Idea Exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London. I had been concerned that our almost legendary lack of familial organization was going to prevent us from seeing it (Matt caught it back in January). But late last week I summoned the wherewithal to log on and book tickets, just managing to sneak in a visit before the show closes.

As a crystallographer from County Antrim in Northern Ireland, it should come as no surprise that I am much taken by the Giants’ Causeway, an impressive basalt rock formation on the north coast that boasts some of the largest crystals in the world. Hexaogal crystals in Co. Antrim – each column is about 60 cm across.

Attending the spring meeting of the Society for General Microbiology in sunny Harrogate earlier this week I had the chance to hear Stanley Prusiner deliver the SGM Prize Lecture on “Prion biology and diseases”. Not bad as talks go, though he would never win prizes for the design of his slides. Prusiner won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine back in 1997 for his work to establish the prion hypothesis.

If this paper is the future of open access publishing, then we are in for an interesting ride. And it’s a journey that will reveal a great deal more about the process of science than most outsiders will have seen hitherto.

In a letter that I received this week from the Wellcome Trust about my grant application I read: “The Committee commended your engaging lay summary, which was deemed to be one of the most entertaining ever presented.” That was very good of them to say so. But it was not good enough . That’s because the statement was preceded by the news that “whilst the Committee agreed your application had merit, the competition was strong, and as a

There is something inherently confessional in a blog, even in a science blog. There is an urge to reveal—do you feel it?—that is normally kept safely in check. Mine is pretty well locked down. And yet I admire those who, on occasion, have cast off their reins and opened their hearts with great honesty. I think particularly of Richard’s pieces on “depression” and, more recently, faith.

Working at home last Thursday, trying to get some quiet time to focus on a review article, I caught the lunchtime news and heard of the untimely death of the actress Wendy Richard. She was best known as Pauline Fowler from long-running BBC soap Eastenders.

I know, I know. He’s been done to death, but I realised this morning that I have been walking past this poster for some weeks now and it’s always pleased me. I think, somehow, it still seems a little… subversive .