News and Announcements
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October 10, 2023 - The War of Attrition
I've got two letters of recommendation to write and I've got to go over Melissa's U01 grant, so OF COURSE IT'S TIME TO UPDATE THE LANGLAIS LAB'S WEBSITE! Hello world, it's me again, writing to you from the heart of science, with a message GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN! Lots of Langlais Lab updates, last Spring saw the graduation of Anay, Mac, and Noah, all off to bigger and better not as great as the Langlais Lab so whatever things. Those guys, who needs them, when we can recruit Alana, Anna, Emilie, Eva, Jake2, and Rotimi BEAT IT MAC, ANAY, AND NOAH! All the new recruits are undergraduates, with the exception of Emilie, the rare Langlais Lab Master's student recruit, that's fun. This coming Spring will see even more losses, as Jake1, Kaelie Z, Madison G, and Rotimus will all be graduating, all of them trying to get into medical school. Still can't get any of these turds to turn to the PhD side LIKE MY HOMEGIRL SKYLAR BATTY who is in year 2 of her PhD at UCSD. Atley made it to medical school as well, over at Midwestern up in Phoenix. So, onto what's important, the Langlais Lab research program. Yeah, so, about that. We lost all of Spring 2023 to contamination. I am not kidding. From December 2022 to May 2023, every single 3T3-L1 6-well plate undergoing differentiation got contaminated. I personally spent every week trying to figure it out, changing each single aspect, and in the end, do you know what it was? The tissue culture room itself. We switched over to Larry's TC room and everything returned to normal. So, screw the Langlais Lab TC, we're done with that dump. Publications have been sparse, yeah the proteomics lab has definitely pumped out a lot of co-authorships for myself, and a lot of the grants that collaborators have asked me to be co-I on have hit, but the Langlais Lab itself has been battling this so-called War of Atrition. I completely pivoted from microtubules in insulin action, opting instead to build a screening system for candidate proteins involved in insulin-stimulated glucose uptake. During the training of all the new students over the past 18 months or whatever, a new system evolved, a new team-based approach for undergraduate immersion in research. Thought it was so cool I decided to pursue it as a proposal, the "Team-Based Undergraduate Biomedical Research Initiative", so, we'll see how that does. Also came up with an interesting spatial proteomics grant that we sent in to the Arizona Biomedical Research Commission, we'll see, i'm not exactly the best at getting funded. Blah. I got a start-up when I showed up in October of 2016, it wasn't much, but I'm obsessed with managing money, and I've managed to stretch that baby to this very day, but, I only have a little left. Just gotta survive the last of this extremely dark and scary abyss that is the current Langlais Lab low ebb. Can't say I've ever been in this situation before, it's a career crossroads, this job man....it's a trip. Larry (my boss) says he's on the way out, the old glide path to retirement, sad to see him leave, if he actually does, cause I swear that dude is going to work until he's one million, i mean, he's already something like 100 or 74. I want him to retire, but, I'm also ok with him running a few more victory laps, need to ride those coattails until I bleed his last drop. We've had such a good run for so long together, just don't want to see it stop. So, there's your report, there are so many balls in the air right now, funny to think i've been doing this for over 25 years. Oh, and I got tenure. Ain't fired yet. |
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August 8, 2022 - Data? Looking to get some data? Anyone?
Being faculty here at the UA, I've got to multitask, and unfortunately, the Langlais Lab website (you know, the end of the internet?), well, it always gets pushed back to the very last priority. NEVER FEAR! AN UPDATE IS HERE, 16 months later! As I tell anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck listening to me, everyone's favorite subject is....themself. I am no ACCEPTION (let's see if my buddy B Rad can figure out whether that is the correct use of acception or whether exception is the word to use, the guy is almost 50 and is still trying to figure out the difference). So, about me, yeah, you will all be pleased to know that, after what seems like years of working on it, I have finally submitted my tenure package. Yes, it is true, I have climbed out of the dark hole of formatting and hunting down past students on Linked In and I have turned in 417 pages of tenure forms. And what's the first thing I do? That's right, update the Langlais Lab website. 2022 has ushered in a complete rebuild of the Langlais Lab. After years of molding Skylar and Atley into the exact form I need them to be in to succeed in the Langlais Lab, they turned around and each held up two hands, one with the middle finger and one with the peace sign, and told me to beat it. They showed up as teenagers and left as yound adults with degrees and bright futures. As undergrads, they did so well, I decided we should replace each of them with three new undergrads a piece, which unfortunately, is a lot, cause we can only sit about four. Whatever, their problem. Since last time I updated, Skylar and I were able to get a review published, and we're currently trying to get DeHaven's CLASP2 phosphorylation paper published (that too has suffered from my inefficient multitasking). I've got the new crop of students doing everything they can to contribute as fast as possible. Proteomics, again, has been out of control, a job in itself. Austin has yet to waver, he's consistently been in-in-to-win-it. What about the future right? With the CLASP2 project riding off into the sunset, just what does the Langlais Lab intend to do next? Guess you'll just have to check in every once in a while, cause we got some pretty interesting things beggining over here. |
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April 16th, 2021 - Kind-Of-Post-Apocalypse Life.
Well that was interesting. As I write this, the Langlais Lab will have been here at the UA COM-T for four and a half years and to me, the fact that we've been here for this long already, is hard to process. 2020 turned out to be pretty productive for us, in spite of it all. We had multiple lab shut-downs, some lab members were forced to flee home, others planned their next chapter after the Langlais Lab, and we even had a new member join us, Kaelie. I was able to submit a second and final attempt at renewing the CLASP2 NIH R01, a proposal that did so bad, the third reviewer logged three 7's, THREE SEVENS. When I was invited to participate in a NIH study section early in 2020, the hope was that I would get better at grant writing, instead, I got better at getting worse. Luckily, I am not alone, things are hard out here, a lot of colleagues are missing cuts as well. The CLASP2 R01 reviews were helpful though and I hope to change direction a bit as a result, mix it up, get out of my comfort zone. So, we'll be losing Mac, she has accepted an offer from Utah to start her PhD in the Fall. DeHaven is finishing his Masters, he has multiple offers from schools for his PhD and he had to decide yesterday what to do. So, we will see if he ends up staying with us for his PhD or instead gives us the middle finger and heads on to greener pastures. Either way, DeHaven has been a solid and dedicated student and he has come a long way in the short time we have had him for his Masters degree. We are hoping 2021 will be productive, with both grants and publications. Skylar and I are putting the finishing touches on a review article about microtubules and insulin, while DeHaven and I are trying to finish the CLASP2 phosphorylation paper. I've got a small grant in already and we will put in a few more before the end of the year. As far as the Proteomics Lab goes, simply out of control, Austin worked through the pandemic with very little down time, resulting in more being done in 2020 as compared to 2019. We've had almost 70 Principal Investigators come through, and helped at least 80 trainees. This has resulted in collaborating on about 70 grants and of course, publications publications publications. Beat it 2020. |
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April 23rd, 2020 - Apocalypse Life.
Hope everyone is doing their best playing their role in the feature film "APOCALYPSE 2020". My character spends 12 hours a day on his laptop in his jam room at home with his new office mate, a 5-year old named Sophia. There's this one scene where Sophia asks 4,518 questions. There's another scene where she asks 2,183 questions. Then there's this one scene where she spills cereal everywhere. This other scene she plays the drums incessantly for 35 minutes straight. The other character, my character Paul, he spends the majority of those scenes telling Sophia "remember it's a workday so PUMP THE BRAKES ON THE F'IN QUESTIONS AND TRACE THE LETTER B". People are whispering "Oscar". I'm pretty pumped. The new Langlais Crew is gaining traction. Mac, Austin, and DeHaven have made excellent strides and we are starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Langlais Lab picked up the very first undergraduate Honors Thesis students, Atley and Skylar, both of which are poised to dominate some science. We got one manuscript on CLASP2 that's nearing completion and we are working on a review as well. We are all working hard on our second and last shot at the CLASP2 R01 renewal, which is focused on G2L1. We have also made the commitment to a new R01 on CLIP and AGAP. The Proteomics Lab is out of control. Austin jumped all-in right from the start and has proven to be elite. 2019 was a good year, a lot of collaborators were able to publish work that involved the Quantitative Proteomics Lab. 2020 has the potential to be even more productive. We couldn't be any happier with the opportunity to have the Proteomics Lab, it has been very rewarding to help everyone out. Alright, that's it for now. See you in the "new normal".
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December 13th, 2019 - Out With The Old In With The New!
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September 13th, 2019 - Langlais Lab Needs to Replace the Walking R01 James Krantz
DO YOU WANT TO DO SCIENCE WITH THE LANGLAIS LAB?We are looking for an extremely skilled scientist to replace James Krantz in the lab, as James is headed off to North Carolina with Nat to glide into their 30's. We are looking for someone with extensive experience in molecular cloning, cell biology, metabolism, cell signaling, and an interest in insulin action combined with the cytoskeleton. That sound like you? GREAT, contact Paul at langlais@deptofmed.arizona.edu TODAY! |
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July 22nd, 2019 - Langlais Lab Website Now Live!
Only took us about 2 years and 10 months since being here, but, the Langlais Lab has figured out the internet! Welcome to our new University of Arizona College of Medicine Langlais Lab world-wide-web site. We just published a paper in Molecular & Cellular Proteomics this month, a big project for us. MCP is a great journal cause they like cutting-edge proteomics mixed together with cell biology, which is exactly what we got into. The Langlais Lab would sincerely like to thank Gus Mouneimne and especially Sara Parker over in the Cellular & Molecular Medicine Department for enabling this project to enter the wonderful world of live-cell imaging. This project simply would not have happened if it wasn't for Sara's all-in attitude and kickassedness. We would also like to thank Nam Lee and Euna Kwak over in the Department of Pharmacology for contributing their expertise on microtubule biology as well. A lot of the microtubule dynamics quantification data came from Chris Deer over at the Data Visualization wing of UITS here at the University of Arizona. Another person that needs credit is Paul Fini over in Biocommunications here at the UA who did such a thorough and professional job on the imagery we generated for the MCP paper. |
RIP NATALIE AND JAMES!!! They've gone to try some new things over in North Carolina, good luck you two. NatJam were with me since Day 1, the Langlais Lab and the Quantitative Proteomics Lab would not be where they are today if it was not for these two. To replace them, we've got Austin in proteomics and Mack over in the Langlais Lab. To top it off, DeHaven has joined the Langlais Lab as a Masters student in the Physiological Sciences Interdisciplinary Program (PSGIDP). The Langlais Lab also has some undergrad students in the works, we'll see where that goes. Several proteomics colaborators published this year (check out the Publications page) and we have quite a few other manuscripts in various stages of completion as well. 2019 was a great year, no complaints, we've managed to make it through a complete lab transition without too much pain. Let's just see what ol' 2020 has to offer. 20 years since 2000, I do not understand how that is possible. 
