Bastille Day

Today is Bastille Day (English term), or more commonly called La Fête Nationale, and in France, it marks the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 and the start of the French Revolution. In a sense it is similar to our Independence Day and is filled with celebrations around town. I missed the military parade earlier in the day due to travel, but I did get to see the evening fireworks and Champs de Mars concert at the foot of the Eiffel Tower with my friend Alli and some of her friends.

The theme of the concert was equality, more specifically to advocate tolerance of other nationalities. Their lineup constituted over 50 artists and it was very nice. I really didn't understand what they were singing or saying (minus a Michael Jackson song they played), but I certainly enjoyed the day. At just the concert, 1.2 million people showed up. To put that into perspective, that's larger than the population of Tucson. Fantastic!

Here's the concert at dusk.


Here's what 1.2 million people may look like.



The fireworks show.

Somewhat jealous

On Monday after work Michel took us to dinner. Before we headed into town, we took a 20 minute car ride up to the northern mountains to a fort built at the mountain top. The road was steep and narrow. If I had to guess it was barely wide enough for two Honda Fits to lie side by side. There were tens of very sharp switch backs and it almost seemed impossible to see if another car was coming up or down the switchback until you got pretty close (then again I was sitting in the back seats). Unfortunately the fort is closed on Mondays so we weren't able to get in, but that didn't stop us from exploring a bit. Off to the side of the fort entrance, there's a staircase built into the mountain side that allowed us to reach the very top of the mountain peak. We scaled no more than 3-4 meters and voila, we were at the top.

The cliff face is incredibly steep, it drops straight down right after the edge. Great for paragliders, not so great if you don't enjoy heights. Regardless of the height, the view was absolutely breath-taking, and I mean it. The sun was about 1.5 hours from setting, so there was more than enough light to see the whole city and into the glacial valley. Facing east you could see Mt. Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, just above the trees; facing south you could oversee all of Grenoble and even some towns more east in the valley; to the west were more mountains. Maybe it was the sun, maybe it was just low hanging clouds, but there was a faint blue haze that defocused objects that were farther in distance, adding to the valley's beauty.

There was a walking trail carved out from the many hikers making a dirt path through the lush greenery. Outside of this 15 inch dirt road, you had plants with yellow and purple flowers, large rocks, trees and still active insects (I saw some flies, bees, and ants). Heck, the bees were so busy with the pollen they didn't even notice us. The trail stopped at a gap in the mountain top, so that's where we stopped. A bit more east though, and across the gap, there was a path built into the mountain side with a passage way that cut through the solid rock. Apparently it extends for miles. That's when it hit me; there aren't close places with such beauty, history, and sights in the U.S. I don't mean the U.S. doesn't have such places, they just aren't normally a 20 minute drive up the mountainside from a well-populated city. And that, is why I'm somewhat jealous.

From here, we walked back to the car, but we didn't go into town immediately. We noticed some hikers walking up an even higher cliff than we were previously on and so we decided to follow suit, even though I wasn't wearing the right shoes (just a pair of sandals). The adventure started out down a hill side with various size stones. Some were about the size of a baseball, others grapefruit-size. At the bottom, we paralleled what seemed to be a man-made moat. Odd, yes, I wouldn't expect a moat on a mountaintop. Interestingly, parallel to the length of the moat, and situated in the center of the moat side, was a small jail-like housing. On our way back to the car we looked inside and on the wall there was a sign. Michel translated and apparently the jail-like place housed cannons of sorts. If intruders tried to get across the moat, they were fired at.

The moat ended and a path leading to this new mountaintop started. We made it up without too much trouble. The hikers we saw earlier were having an evening picnic with the sun set. They had carried up a case of wine and laid out a blanket on the ground. I saw what looked like a pasta salad with chunks of tomato, though I couldn't really tell. They took some pictures for us and we did they same for them. It was very fun. We stayed up there, for about 10 - 15 minutes, then decided to return to town for dinner. By the time we returned to the car, it was about 8:15PM.

Dinner was yummy. It was three courses for 27 euros. For my first course, I had a salad with fried cheese and thick slices of a prosciutto-like meat, then rabbit with a bed of vegetables for my second course. I've never had rabbit before. It didn't taste "gamey" at all, and was very lean. I think I enjoyed the vegetables and the sauce they used a bit more than the rabbit meat. Then for desert I got sorbet. It was a good meal for the end of the day.

Fort St. Eynard

On Monday, our host, Dr. Michel Vivaudou – Head of the Channels Group at IBS – took us for a short trip up to Fort St. Eynard (or here).  We had seen the view of the city from Le Bastille and it was stunning, however, it did not prepare us for the amazing view of the city and region found from Fort St. Eynard.  The trip up through La Tronche and surrounding suburbs around Grenoble was beautiful.  Upon arriving at the fort, we took a short walk up to the “edge”.  From the edge you can see Mont Blanc, as well as most other key mountains and regions in that surround Grenoble. It was stunning and the pictures that will be posted below do not do this view justice (in all fairness, I only took my cell phone).

The fort is situated at the top of one of the mountains to the north of Grenoble and there is a sheer face that has a vertical drop >1000 m (I think, it actually seemed higher so I’ll have to check the stats).  It was a stunning view and an even more stunning fete to think that the Fort was built atop the mountain over 100 years ago with little modern machinery.  We took another short hike to the other side of the fort to see a slightly different angle including Le Bastille, which from this height looked rather small.

Afterwards, we headed to Centre Ville Grenoble (downtown) to have a very nice French dinner and enjoy the company of our host.  I’ve said many times on this blog how lucky we were to have such good collaborators and hosts, and every time I’ve meant it.  We are very grateful for all that they have done to make us feel welcome both in the lab and out.  I hope to be able to return the favor soon!

A view over the edge.  It's a LONG drop

Grenoble from Ft. St. Eynard

Grenoble from Ft. St. Eynard

Au revoir

It is with a bit of sadness that I leave Grenoble to return back to the US.  I am very excited to see my family again and to return to my “real job” but the time in the lab here and the relationships that have been established have been very memorable and I am anxious to continue our work.  A quick note of thanks again to our hosts and lab mates, particularly Dr. Christophe Moreau and Dr. Michel Vivaudou.  So for now I say, “au revoir” to Grenoble (or maybe “à bientôt” would be a better choice of words). 

Marseille, You Say?

Last Friday (July 8), Mark and I decided to head to the Mediterranean Port city of Marseille.  I have wanted to see Marseille for some time, as it came highly recommended by a friend.  We booked the train and headed down Friday evening on the TGV (the fast train).  The TGV travels >250 km/hr and can go faster, or so I’m told.  We arrived in Marseille about 2.5 hours later with big ambitions.  I should have probably been skeptical when our French friends in Grenoble would only say, “Marseille, huh? It’s in the south of France”.  I wasn’t sure what that statement was supposed to mean but in retrospect, we should have read between the lines. 

Marseille is a port city with a stunning harbor. It is the primary route of ferry traffic and is the port of entry for most of the goods and peoples coming from the Mediterranean region.  It is also the port of entry for a large number of cruise ships.  As we left the train station headed to find our hotel, we quickly realized we were not in Grenoble anymore.  While Grenoble is a relatively small, easy-going city, Marseille is more reminiscent of a large US metropolis.  It is, after all, the second largest city in France.  Our hotel was right in the city center, about 10 min walk from the train station.  In theory that was a great idea.  In practice, the city center was more than a bit frightening at times. 

After hotel check-in, and dealing with a security issue that I’ll spare the details of, we headed down to the harbor to have some dinner and enjoy the sea.  It turned out to be a nice evening and the harbor is a very active and interesting place.

The next morning we made a tour of some of the more popular sites in the city.  Notre Dame de la Garde, Palais Pharo and Palais de Longchamps.  There are some stunning sites in Marseille and you are never far from the coastline, which is quite nice.  After touring the city for the day, we took the “slow” train back to Grenoble through the French Alps, where we saw probably the most stunning scenery of the trip (up until that point). 

After returning to Grenoble we were talking with our friends in about our trip and again we heard (more than once), "well that’s Marseille, it’s in the South of France.”

Palais de Longchamps in Marseille.  You have to see it to believe it.

Arc de Triomph in Marseille

A view of Marseille from Notre Dame de la Garde

A view of Marseille from Notre Dame de la Garde

A view of Marseille from Notre Dame de la Garde

An old US tank in the streets of Marseille.

It is apparently perfectly acceptable to park on the sidewalks in Marseille.

Fort St. Nicholas - One of several old forts that guarded the harbor.

I had to go to Marseille to see the same things I have in the back yard.

The harbor in Marseille.

Simple is better

Today was a more science filled day. We wanted to see if partitioning in polymerizable monomers would increase the stability of an ooctyes plasma membrane. The plasma membrane is held together by weak van der waals interactions, and something as simple as transferring a piece of membrane across an air-water interface is enough to disturb the bilayer structure. If we want to use ICCR's in a biosensor platform, we need to satisfy several criterion, two of which our lipids research hopefully fulfills: we must 1) provide a hydrophobic environment that, for the most part, mimics the protein-lipid interactions found in a real plasma membrane such that the ICCR correctly folds, and 2) provide a membrane with extended lifetime for longer term use in, e.g. diagnostics or high throughput screening of drugs.

In an ooctye, a large amount of structural stability is provided by the vitelline membrane. In our experiments, we decided to remove this membrane and directly partition monomers into the plasma membrane. That part, and the polymerization was easy, but, the big question was, how would we quantitatively determine whether the oocyte had increased structural stability?

Generally, ooctyes have a spherical shape, which is relatively easy to deform, especially once the vitelline membrane (VM) is removed. If you were to transfer the VM-less oocyte to a paper towel, the surrounding water would quickly soak up, and the oocyte would flatten out like a pancake. In contrast, if the VM is still attached, the oocyte still has some structure even after the surrounding water is removed. To give an idea of it's shape, picture a water droplet you've put on your desk; it's somewhat round, but not completely. We could use this physical test to observe structural stability, comparing non-peeled ooctyes, peeled oocytes, and polymerized oocytes. Alternatively, we could try chemical tests, exposing oocytes to different solvents.

Christophe and I tried both physical and chemical tests. To dry the surrounding water, we used a piece of paper and a paper towel. The paper was much slower at absorbing water, so we discontinued its use. The towel was useful. It absorbed water quickly. However, it was hard to discern the oocyte shape. From there, we moved onto chemical tests. We tried ethanol, soapy water, decane, SDS solutions, and chloroform. The chloroform was funny, because it immediately turned the low density polyethylene petri dish into a goopy mess. As a chemist, I should have known that would happen, but in the spirit of investigation, I was mostly caught up in testing the stability.

Suprisingly, the oocyte can handle many chemical insults. They withstood ethanol; chloroorm and decane removed some of the lipids on the dark side of the oocyte, but did not compromise its stability; SDS and soapy water caused the oocytes to disintegrate, but only after an extended period (20 minutes). Certainly these tests should be performed again to ensure we obtain the same results.

From there, we decided that an air-water interface transfer provided the easiest to interpret results, it was simply a matter of how to replicate the transfer without the need of a towel. Christophe took some oocytes sitting in a petridish of water and removed the water with a pipette. Voila!! The oocytes behaved similar to the paper towel; the peeled oocytes flattened like a pancake and the non-peeled oocytes kept their shape. The polymerized oocytes were a bit harder to discern, and we'll try again. In the end, the best test was the simpliest.

Nearing the End of the First Journey

As my last week in Grenoble begins, I look back on our time here with great satisfaction.  The quality of the scientific interactions and the personal relationships that have been developed are higher than I would have ever dreamed.  We knew from previous works and reputation that the Channels Research Group at IBS performed very high quality science.  What we didn’t know was what high quality individuals they are.  Our colleagues here have proven yet again that you can be exceptional scientists and at the same time be wonderful people. 

From the moment we arrived in Grenoble Dr. Christophe Moreau has gone beyond all expectations to make our time here productive, but even more so, to make it fun.  Group leader Dr. Michel Vivaudou has welcomed us into his lab and has shared his science with us in an open and unfettered manner, allowing us to understand what is really being done in the lab on a day by day basis.  The research synergy between our labs is almost immeasurable and should position us to work together for the foreseeable future.  Overall, it has been demonstrated time and again that we made the right choice in coming to Grenoble and working with our colleagues here. 

Though my time here is coming to an end this week, Mark will continue here for another 4 weeks, continuing to strengthen our collaboration and helping us collect the data necessary for the two proposal submissions that we have planned for the coming months.

 

As mentioned often in this blog, the GREET program was instituted to facilitate long term research collaborations between research groups in the US and an international partner.  When we arrived in Grenoble, I knew that we would have the possibility to build a strong, long-term interaction with our colleagues at IBS.  I could not have imagined how well it has gone.  I look forward to the future with great anticipation and anxiously await many more trips to Grenoble!