Rikard Erlandsson Believe it or not but this is one of my best pages! Constructed 1998-05-30. Improved (changed!) 98-12-13.

Here, Ida and Emma are picking the first Horse hoofs of the year.

Two lovely kids strotting around in nature, examining and evaluating the real world. Like real scientists.

I have realized that I have RLS - however not diagnosed by a physician yet. It was funny. I was just sitting and reading Medline online searching for hereditary deseases, chromosomes or whatever. Or maybe I was searching for a link to Mensa Speisekarte. Since I found the Munich site first I guess that was it. Well, just like that I see the words restless legs. Oh, shit. What is this? And I am not alone anylonger. I checked my surroundings for symptoms and found my mother having it, which fits with a dominant mode of inheritance. Do you want to know more about this syndrom? Try these links:

I read books that I would like to write. Check Books read.

The sequencing factory.

James sat down in his chair in front of the computer at the communication center. He took the head-set from the hook, adjusted the microphone and made sure he could hear Rik and Steve talking in the ear-phone.
"I'm in the command chair now. Do you read me?" he said to no-one in particular and had a sip of espresso. "At what stage are you?"
"We are ready to start the run this very minut. Where have you been?" Rik answered irritated into his head-set and put on a pair of disposable gloves. Rik was standing in the corridore outside the lab with the big laser equipped DNA-sequencers. He was wearing a yellow lab-coat labelled SEQUENCING LAB ONLY on the back.
"Let's get started." Steve said in his head-set. "I'll start the denaturation procedures." Steve, dressed in a similar lab-coat, opened the freezer and took out sixteen 384 well plates with sequencing reactions to be loaded on the dual laser machines. He placed them in four-by-four rows on a plastic tray.
"OK, are you ready to go in Rik?" James asked and turned to whatch the computer console connected to the big sequencing machines. In one window he could see Steve walking with the plates toward the denaturation robot. "Steve, put plates in position."
He said and switched the heat on by turning a big metallic dial from blue counter-clock wise to red on his big control panel.
A plastic blip sounded from the robot and the steel arm shot out from the robot and fetched the plates one by one in less than 5 seconds from the tray presented to it by Steve. "OK, we're started." Steve said.
"Then I'm ready. Make sure the heat is on and start up the lasers. I am entering now!" Rik said and opened the door quickly. He entered the high tech fascility through the double doors and the pressurized chambers. The first 384 well plate was ready and came into the lab from storage facility through a refridgerated cold pipe. Rik moved the first plate to the sequencer number one, called Luna, and attached the loading mechanism. The second to sixtenth were delivered in the same maner to the sixteen machines. Rik had no time think, he just fed the machines. Afterwards he took a quick look to make sure everything was running as expected. He left for a shower in the exit area. Steve entered the exit area at the same time as Rik.
"Well done. Thanks for your manual input." James said on his side. "Why don't you join me here for a coffee after your showers."
"See you." Rik said and switched off his head-set. Steve did the same and went for the sterilizing showers.
James followed the procedures on his TV-screens and thought of how lucky he was to get this highly skilled crue for his project. It had not been easy. First, he had convinced the two big competing breweries L"wenbrau and Paulaner to fund his brewers yeast research. The Hefe-projekt was now as important to the German industry as the Deutsche Human Genom Projekt had once been. The main goal of the project was to characterize and determine the genetic relationship between all different bavarian yeast strains.
It had not been easy since none of them wanted to share their strains. But after years of discussions with lawyers and solicitors an agreement had been enginered. The bottom-line was all research and the results thereof had to be kept secret, not only to the funding partners but also to the public which meant that publication of the results were out of question.
An initially small company had been set up to keep live stocks of all yeast strains possibly used for beer. Basically all Bavarian breweries had joined the yeast bank. The first years of sequencing had shown how similar most strains were. Now they had started the new phase, to create the ultimate Weissbier yeast. They had already pin-pointed 77 genes in the yeast genome responsible for the taste of wheat-beer. By a simple knock-out and insert strategy they had created what seemed to be the ultimate strain.
When Rik and Steve entered the control-room James was aleady reading the nucleotides as they came off the sequencers.

to be continued . . . . .

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