What is this blog even about?

The first question on your minds might be "what is this blog even about." Well, I hope someone knows -- maybe even me!

Quite simply, it follows me as I go from Oregon, USA (my home region) to Alberta, Canada (a region new to me, for the most part). Literally speaking, this is the topic of this blog! The transition of my life, the new things in Alberta, the familiar things, and my reactions overall to this new landscape.

However, as a Fulbright scholar, I am also coming to Canada from the US for two purposes 1) to perform academic research and 2) community engagement. I will research therapies for muscular disorders, especially the severe Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy under a Professor at the University of Alberta in the Medical Genetics department. Maybe you will hear more about

This *may* be a good time to explain the title! "Exon skipping" is a genetic technique that allows you to skip an "exon" of a gene, and it is the primary technique I will study. The body reads a gene in exons, which can be likened to words in a text, and then produces a protein; however, if this reading does not make sense to the body, the protein will be degraded. Exon-skipping can be likened to skipping words for the "nonsense" reading, so that the reading frame makes sense once more.

So let's consider this sentence that makes sense: The brown fox jumped over the fence. (Analogy: The reading of the gene makes sense.)

If you delete the phrase "br" and the sentence no longer makes sense: Theown fox jumped over the fence. (Analogy: the reading of the gene does not make sense and doesn't make functional protein).

Then you can skip the phrase "theown" and you will get a sentence that mostly makes sense: Fox jumped over the fence. (Analogy: the reading of the gene mostly makes sense and makes partially functional protein; this is essentially exon-skipping.)

As for why I am "exon skipping" from Oregon to Alberta -- well it sounded clever, and you know that's half my reason to live!