I met Robert Gentleman, founder of the "R" project for statistical computing. He's working at the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center now.

Each Nobel winner writes a brief autobigraphy which is published in book form, but also on this web site. Lee Hartwell's autobigraphy here...

I did a search on "elegans" in the Fred Hutch faculty directory - you can see the principal researchers that are using this worm as a model to study cancer, metabolism, and development.

Hits include Roth, Van Gilst, and Buck.

Dr. Buck received the 2004 Nobel prize for her work in identifying the mechanisms of smell and taste. She's identified about 1,000 odorant receptors, their genetic components, and the neural pathways that enable us to interpret these combinatorial inputs as different odors.

Quoted: Our experiments indicate that the OR family is used in a combinatorial fashion to encode odor identities. Each OR detectsnumerous odorants, but different odorants are recognized by different combinations of ORs. Changing the concentration of an odorant, or slightly altering its structure, changes its receptor code, providing an explanation for the ability of such changes to alter a chemical's perceived
odor.

I met Dr. Gilst last night at a Fred Hutch Lab Crawl. He's using C. elegans as a model for how organizisms metabolize and use fat. I was especially impressed that they had discovered significant differences in how C. elegans uses fat in different phases of it's life; as the worm ages, fat is used less in the maintenance of cell membrane tissue, and more is put into fat storage.

We also had an interesting conversation about how fasting triggers a strong response to use fat reserves, whereas caoloric restriction may not. In C. elegans - for each day they "starve" a worm, it's life span increases by a day (to a limit of 50% it's normal like span).

If extended to humans, you might conclude that we should eat every other day if we wanted to live longer...

One of the "science fiction" projects at Fred Hutch - Dr. Roth has developed a technique for putting animals into a state of suspended animation by exposing them to 80ppm hydrogen sulfide.

Quoted: Using another highly toxic gas, hydrogen sulfide, we found we can reversibly reduce the metabolic rate of mice: exposed to 80 ppm of hydrogen sulfide, mice enter into what we call a "hibernation-like" state, where their core temperature can be reduced as much as 11 degrees and their metabolic rate as judged by carbon dioxide production and oxygen consumption drops 10-fold. We've kept the animals in this state for 6 hours and they recover completely.

I'm helping Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center in building their major donor roster. It's a hoot to see my Blue Dot official title (Head Cheerleader) in print - especially in an otherwise serious context.

I've also had the pleasure of signing contracts and filling in the Title under my name as Head Cheerleader. Nobody bats an eye. It's fun to make up the rules as you go along!

Quoted: Mike Koss
Head Cheerleader, Blue Dot, Inc.

Next Hutch Gala is December 9th.

Leadership giving at Fred Hutch.