Oui Buenafe

What's the real feeling of power?

Being able to eat seafood without sneezing and wheezing.

2 weeks before we fly MNL-ORD to attend the 19th IZFS Conference!

So even this here will be sunsetted as well? So sad to see this go. But thank you for your hard work!

This summer term, our group's sole undergrad thesis student is our intern. One of my grad students coined the term "fintern" for them.

Almost a decade ago, setback after setback, I was prepared to just quietly molder away as a small fish. Water's too rough, too crowded, & the pandemic hit.
And now: water's still too rough & crowded, I'm still a small fish, but I have to swim the rapids, so my small fry will have a place to grow.

(Puts on chem dept chair hat)
Wonderful news for the department at the end of the academic year: we have 3 MS Chem graduates marching & receiving their degrees this June!

July 2025 is shaping up as a month of conferences and workshops for our small fry:
- July 2nd-4th: 39th PH Chemistry Congress
- July 9th-13th: 19th International Zebrafish Conference
- July 25th: 2nd Annual Meeting for the PH Metabolomics Network

Trying to swim and make friends in the shoal!

Did my civic duty today. I pray that things don't go fully sideways. #PHElections2025

My second grad student Camille getting a special citation award from the SOSE OSRA 2025, more than a week after successfully defending her MSc thesis on zebrafish nanotox. Such an honor to see a student grow from the undergrad days to now! Congrats!

Finally, a photo of our small fry, big dreams research group.
And, in case y'all are wondering, we're all chemists here, but we believe in the tiny-but-mighty zebrafish!

It's definitely 🇵🇭 summer season here...without AC running, the water temps in the zebrafish tanks run above 30°C. And we're raising baby fish rn.

Structures of DNA and morpholino oligonucleotides. R and R' denote continuation of the oligomer chain in the 5' or 3' direction, respectively. Credit to Corey & Abrams (2001) Genome Biology.

Published 25 years ago, “Effective targeted gene ‘knockdown’ in zebrafish” by Nasevicius & Ekker is the 2nd most-cited #zebrafish paper (www.nature.com/articles/ng1...). They describe use of antisense morpholino-modified oligonucelotides or #morpholinos that inhibit translation. #ZebrafishFunFacts 🧪

Just do it. Swoosh.

ICYMI…

New features from @zfinmod.bsky.social 🐟

🔗 academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

Seeing the news re: stuff going on in the US related to detaining/deporting non-US nationals with *valid* visas...makes me wonder if my grad student & I will get to the IZFS conference unscathed.

Overworked this 2nd semester (that's Spring semester for y'all). I derive no joy nor pride in my admin work atm.

But somehow I was able to manage to cobble together an abstract submission for the 19th IZFS conference & submit it with my registration.

Zebrafish is your spirit animal.

Some humor during these uncertain times...
Yesterday, we went out on a short road trip to the city of Pasay (sp. to Cartimar) not for fish supplies but for taho (silken tofu dessert).
One of my grad students quipped:

"Why call it an oncogene and not a...carcino-gene?"

So there's a live-action movie version of the manga "Cells At Work", which has helped many a pre-med (and med school) student in their biochem/cell-molbio. And it's going to be shown here in 🇵🇭 next Wed.
...I want to watch it.

Why is there a devaluation of poster presentation for uni grant purposes?

Re-reads the university's conference presentation grants policies & guidelines for faculty and grad students. Sees this:

"Making a poster presentation at a conference does not make one eligible for the grant."

Opens mouth. Shuts mouth. Hmmm.

Thanks for the heads-up! Trying to figure out how to plot the whole thing out for my grad students esp that we need to get the visa applications for them too (travails of classic 3rd world STEM folks).

Checks registration details for the 19th IZFS Conference.

Winces at registration fee.

Groans at the odd requirement by our university in order to get a conference subsidy for self and for the graduate students in my research group.

Is there a way for defraying the costs?

Because everyone in the department was frazzled, I just realized that we haven't set up the holiday fishcare schedule. Hnnngh. We live nearby anyway.

Lesson in Filipino--
False: "Tinatapos ko ang sem na ito."
True: "Tinatapos ako ng sem na ito."

Barely managing my first semester as department chair. But I'll just trust my own tenacity and stubbornness to learn.

Let your timeline shine with these outstanding #WomenInScience! 🧪 #zebrafish go.bsky.app/4BegEjv

Without meaning to, the weekend zebrafish care protocol now includes checking/feeding our largest striped one in the main building (our fish lab is in a different building). The direction of the stripes (and color) seems odd.

In lieu of a dept Christmas party, I set up a dept checking party because we need to get the grades in next week by the semester's end.

It's Finals Week/Exam Block for the semester, and I'm down with a nasty cold (no fever, just bad nausea and sinusitis).