At 1:00 yesterday, completely by accident, I realized that it was my turn to present a paper at journal club at 9:00 today. I decided to present something that was interesting, different and uncomplicated, seeing as I had only two hours to prepare. This is what I found: the best excuse ever for going to have that extra cup of coffee. It will prevent skin cancer! The only way that this is related to my research is if you apply the six degrees of separation rule. Productive use of my time? Puh-lease! But I'm not the one who insists we sit in random journal club once a week*. Anyway, the authors, following up on some mouse work and some epidemiological studies, examined the effects of caffeine on apoptosis in UVB exposed keratinocytes, and conclude that caffeine pretreatment leads to an increase in apoptosis via ATR/ CHK1 signaling pathways. A dead cell can't cause cancer, so ergo caffeine is a good anti-cancer prophylaxis . Actually, when reading through the article, I think the whole point was to introduce a potential new specific inhibitor of Chk1 kinase; however, they never actually show that Chk1 is inhibited, so I'm not sure I am convinced.

The part that was really interesting? The fact that the journal had a press release detailing the study. How can I have been doing research for so many years and never realized that journals did this???? I guess I just always skipped that section. The "In the Press" section. So that is what that means… ahh, to do research that would get one In the Press. The mainstream press, that is.

We interrupt this daydream to move on to the point at hand: journal club is done, I drank my grande extra bold turbo coffee with extra cream and sugar, went to the bathroom three times, and now it is time to soak up some sun while I eat my lunch outside. Sunscreen? Nah. I'm good.

*yes yes, journal club can be informative. But 95% of the time it only serves to provide me with more time to sit and drink my coffee before it gets cold.

**as if I planned it, this was the PhD comic from today.