On the road

Protein Dimerization and Oligomerization in Biology is a textbook that can be yours for the princely sum of £126. I know this because last week I received an email from a cove in India wanting a copy of a chapter from that book, called “The Detection and Quantitation of Protein Oligomerization”. Why did they ask me, you might well wonder. So did I, until I retrieved from long-term storage the memory that I’d actually contributed to that chapter—over three and a half years ago. My Indian correspondent wanted a copy last week because it had only just been published (oddly enough it’s down in my CV as a 2009 publication).

A brief email exchange with my old boss followed. He told me that although we were late submitting our chapter (and I do remember that rush, now), ours was actually the first one in. So the 3+ year delay wasn’t our fault.

They do things differently in the private sector, of course.

This is a book we’ve just put together to accompany a continuing medical education (CME)-accredited event taking in place in a little under two weeks’ time. Back in about March, it didn’t exist.

To be fair, there was a pre-existing German language book—which had to be translated and (heavily) edited—but over the last two or three months I’ve worked with Professor Sylvia Haas and the people at my company, to produce from effectively a standing start what’s turned out to be a rather lovely, illustrated history of anticoagulation in the treatment and prevention of anticoagulation. Katherine and myself hammered the translation that Sylvia provided into a coherent form, and Rachel made some lovely graphics to our specifications (and typeset the thing, too)—I even created some original artwork for it myself. James and Andrew supplied mad editing skills, making it into a real professional piece of work.

We are very pleased with it, and I hope we’re going to get round to selling it as a standalone coffee-table piece after the meeting next week. I doubt it’ll cost anywhere near £126.