Hydrophobic effect: oil droplets merging in water to hide their fears

SPR: measuring the rhythm of a heartbeat between two molecules (real-time tracking of association and dissociation)

Protein networks: a social graph- hubs, connectors, and transient acquaintances...

How would your Science be?

ITC: warmth of a handshake (measures the heat released or absorbed during binding)

Multivalency: Velcro - strength from many tiny hooks (multiple weak interactions sum into stability)

SEC: Like watching who walks out of a crowded room together (Separates complexes by size and shape)

X ray crystallography: a frozen poem written in diffraction spots

Binding energy landscape: mountain valley guiding a river into its lowest path (energy minimization)

Molecular dynamics: Like watching a city breathe in atomic time (every atom moves, interacts, and evolves)

Still, that’s the beauty of it. Every bit of confusion, every “aha” moment, every late-night rabbit hole, it all adds up. Maybe the goal isn’t to ever feel like we fully understand it all, but just to keep learning, one residue, one paper, and one small realization at a time.

It’s like constantly assembling a puzzle without ever seeing the picture on the box. Some days you find a corner piece and feel like a genius; other days, you wonder if you’re even working on the right puzzle.

Because while I can appreciate the brilliance on display, I can’t help but think, how on earth does one ever reach that level of understanding?

But maybe that’s the unspoken reality of doing a PhD - half the time you’re learning, the other half you’re realizing how much you don’t know.

Most of these papers feel like they’re written in a parallel universe of concepts I haven’t unlocked yet. Still, the brilliance is unmistakable. It made me realize how vast the landscape of knowledge really is, and how far there still is to go.

Recently, I stumbled upon this paper on hydrophobic entrenching pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

and wow. The elegance of the writing, the clarity of the thought, the depth of the insights… Bravo, truly. I’ll admit, I didn’t even understand the whole thing.

Beyond classifying it as hydrophobic or hydrophilic, and vaguely recalling its protonation or deprotonation tendencies, I’m basically lost. It’s amazing (and slightly painful) how long it can take to even begin to grasp the complexity of this field.

With our experience we kmow that the peptide is doing its best impression of Schrödinger’s molecule- there and not there :D

Since the pictures speak louder than words, here are some memories from SOLEIL. If one wants to know more about the synchrotron, have a look- youtu.be/b15hUPV5sBY?...

People including Pierre Legrand and our in house crystallographer Franck Coste were kind to help us dive in the crystals world.

Definitely one of those days where you leave feeling 93% more brilliant just by standing near the equipment.

One of the memorable day of la vie.

We watched as crystals were mounted, zapped, and turned ever so precisely, collecting diffraction patterns from every angle. Each diffraction "dot" holds clues to the structure of the molecule- put them all together, and voila: we solve the atomic jigsaw puzzle...

Because in the end, science doesn’t grieve your prep. It doesn’t care how many hours you spent optimizing lysis buffers or re-checking A280 readings. The experiment moves forward. The next prep begins.

And you- tired, heartbroken, but stubborn- begin again too.

There are a hundred ways to lose your protein. Each one more devastating than the last. And yet, all you can do is sigh, clean up, and start again.