Muffins and Music

Four days of work, four code commits, and each more confuzzling than the last. The system at the Genome Institute is ginormous (which is actually in my spell-check dictionary unlike confuzzling). Enough data and code goes through the pipes each day that I imagine one day's worth could be used for a phd thesis. Coworkers with a year or two under their belt are still learning vigorously.

The gist is that DNA is read in very minuscule chunks by chemistry machinery. Those chunks are then aligned in order making as good a guess at a strand of DNA as possible. That reading is compared to past readings to look for mutations. That's where music comes in, MUtational Significance In Cancer. Hopefully by knowing these mutations, different types of cancer can be treated in precise and effective ways.

The DNA data with lots of analysis data is saved in the datacenter at a rate of ~4 terabytes a day on special SAS harddrives that are ~$1k per terabyte I think. My job (so far in training exercises) is to make sure this continues to happen smoothly. There are always little programming bugs that cause the data processing to stop, which takes hours on its own. I've added bits to the code managing the analysis process mainly trying to conceptualize the system as a whole because there are so many interconnected components.

Our work area is called cloverfield because each large desk is shaped like a 4 leaf clover, which sits 4 people. This makes it easy to talk with others who specialize in different key components of the system. This constant communication is necessary during development because no one knows everything.

I like everything so far. The social environment is light and happy, and there is enough complexity in the work to sink my teeth into and be kept interested for a long while. Right now I think Zoe and Rich my roommates made muffins though. Zoe is a fabulous cook in training!