Life isn't really complicated

but that's how it looks on the surface.

I've been looking at how some antibodies interact with their targets, using recombinant proteins in comparison with natural ones. The application is in creating tests to measure natural proteins, but in order to do that I have to be sure the materials I have will give meaningful results, and that's not always the case.

I tried explaining to Chris this evening. Imagine someone sneaked in during the night and changed your tape measure, so that instead of feet it used millimeters instead. Now imagine that same person did this with most tape measures used by those whose opinion in how long things should be was most valued by the world. Suppose you then went and, using a standard of measure created and stored by a world authority, discovered that the measurements everyone had been using was about 1000 X too small. And not only that, but some rulers that you'd tested about 6 years before (produced by a prestigious University in the US) in comparison with the dodgy rulers had appeared to be wrong, but were in fact correct....

So you start thinking life might be a little more complicated than it should be.

If I did not have access to the tools and the experience that I do, this project would have gone in the bin by now (and it very nearly did anyway). However there is a very distinct possibility that things will actually work out well after all, and we may get a useful commercial product after all. And for those who wonder, I think there really IS quite a lot of grace from God in here, allowing me to keep going.