Sitting at home writing my post-doc application and my last thesis chapter. I'm taking a break from writing now .... by writing this. Outside it is snowing

Yesterday's department colloquim was by Paul Turner. It was quite interesting and he was a very good speaker. He talked about sex and complementation in viruses.. Apparently some viruses, including influenza, have multiple DNA fragments. If there is coinfection of a host, viral offspring can contain a reassortment of the fragments of parental viruses. This is for of sex in addition to recombination with host DNA. Complementation also requires coinfection, and occurs when a virus that is less fit when infecting by itself, gains a fitness benefit when coinfecting with a more fit virus - which incurs a cost in Turner's system, the bacterio+hage phi-6, because there is an upper limit to # of viruses produced in a host. He used this system experimentally to see how the forces of sex - that purge mutations - and complementation - which allow mutations to persist in a population longer - compare. This would address the question of whether sex in viruses allows them to avoid mutation load. His experiments showed that complementation was a stronger force, for populations udnergoing complementation lost mutations at a slower rate than controls. Complementation is a curious phenomena whose mechanism is not well understood. He ventured to ideas: that the less fit virus benefits either from a more efficient RNA polymerase or from an excess of protein shells produced by the fitter virus. I asked whether there were the equivalent of 'species barriers' to complementation, to which Turner replied there is a recently discovered bacteriophage phi-8 that may allow one to look into that.

In the evening, I did a performance of the Festival of One-Act Plays at Theatre Three. Jonathan Hickman and Lee Brown, my friends and housemates came. It went well - I love playing Chaplin, the scottie. Unfortunetly, Danny Amy didn't arrive in time for his act. He is directing 'Grease' at Rosylyn HS, and was there that night. We were convinced he would make it. But when it came time for the last act, 'Napkin', he wasn't there. Matt Paduano decided correctly to not go ahead with it, and made a (very) brief message that the performance was over. The actors were all standing backstage not knowing whether to come out and take a final bow. It was so bizarre I burst out laughing and had to run further into the theatre so as to not be heard.