ExpBio Day 5 - The Final Presentation

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the lateness of this post, but I was exhausted with all the running around at the end of the conference! I bring you the last post in my series of Conference Fashion posts for the Experimental Biology Meeting I went to in Boston this week! The last day of the conference was Wednesday, and I was presenting my data in a poster session (see last photo of the post!). I was sad to be done in Boston, as I fell in love with the city and the city life. I was also sad the conference was over, as I had learned so much going to all of the talks and interacting with all of these great, intelligent people! 

A lot of people came to my poster, and I was excited because most of the people I saw give talks came to talk to me and hear about my research. I got a lot of great ideas and had some amazing conversations about new research in the field! I am inspired to go back and do more experiments!

I wasn't going to photograph my last outfit, as I had a really hard time deciding what to wear (I changed about 4 times, all too early in the AM before I had to pack my things and check out before setting up my poster at the convention center! can you say STRESS??!). BUT, I am really happy with how my outfit turned out, very professional and sleek! 

I decided I wanted to wear this greenish-turquoise statement necklace from Forever21, so I tried to put together pieces that would be simple and work well with the color and piece! (Statement necklace dictating the outfit for the win!)

ExpBio 2015: Day 3 - Reppin the Blue and Gold

Happy Monday!
Today is Day 3 of the Experimental Biology 2015 conference here in Boston, MA, and it is getting good!
I woke up early today to head to a Post Translational Modifications Session on Arginine Modifications, and it was great! I learned a lot about the research that is going on in my field, and I got to meet another professor who I have collaborated with/tested some enzyme activity. The session was 2.5 hours long, but it seemed to fly by. Each talk was about 20ish minutes I believe, and there are some really interesting things going on in the arginine modification world! One of the most interesting things I learned is about Arginine Phosphorylation in bacteria! If you are knowledgable about the eukaryotic proteasome degradation system, you know that proteins get marked for degradation by ubiquitination, which then signals shuttling/entrance into the proteasome and then the protein will get degraded.
Apparently, some bacteria, specifically Bacillus subtilis have an arginine kinase, that originally was identified as a tyrosine kinase. First off, I didn't know that arginine could get phosphorylated. Second, this phosphorylation is thought to work as a degradation marker for the proteasome in these bacteria! I did not know about this. The fact that arginine, which is positively charged, can become a bulky entity with now a large negative charge, I guess it just never crossed my mind!
After this session, I attended a bioinformatics session on how to find proteins with unknown function through online database searches and groupings. I learned how to use new online tools that I will check out to learn more about my enzyme and its orthologs!