San Diego: Day 2 - a visit to Balboa Park

It's Hilary's first day (actually, a half-day) at the ICIEM conference she's attending, so I took part of it to start writing this blog. She managed to get away early, so we returned to the restaurant where we had lunch yesterday and enjoyed their signature Caribbean Cajun chicken green salad with mangos, papya, oranges, and strawberries - a wonderfully cool combination in this warm weather - and then set off for Balboa Park.

Balboa Park

Balboa Park was created in 1868, and later became the site of the Panama Exposition in 1915, commemorating the opening of the Panama Canal. The result was the construction of some beautiful classically Spanish buildings and terraces that now houses over a dozen world-class museums and art galleries. The first we went to, at the entrance of the park, was the Museum of Man. At first, Hilary and I thought it has been set inside a church. The architectural irony of this was not lost, as it was clearly a tribute to the evolution of man (with some remarkable exhibits of early fossils, skeletons and ancient mummys). In fact, however, the building and the majestic California Tower was built as part of the exposition in 1915.

The museum itself was opened in 1933.

<-- Busker moving on to his next engagement in Balboa Park

A great way to beat the heat in Balboa Park-->

<-- cooling off in a local cafe

The heat in the afternoon was just barely tolerable. Even the local hotel workers, who have to go home to hot apartments after their shift, are complaining. Approaching the high nineties, San Diego is usually at least ten degrees cooler this time of the year.

We didn't stay long, therefore, in the park, but rather took the metro bus (an experience in itself) back downtown, then walked back to the hotel in time to do a quick workout in a nice air-conditioned gym before dinner.

The convention is now in full swing, so the main reception, which took place tonight pool-side at the Hyatt with a 'Surfin in the USA' theme, gave me an opportunity to meet some of Hilary's colleagues, some of whom I've known for years.

Hilary valiantly tried tried to keep the topics 'non-work' related. However, inevitably, I began to learn far more about rare mitochondrial disorders and the latest in molecular biochemistry techniques than I'll ever need to know. It was very interesting, though. It seems only yesterday that sequencing the entire human genome was reported in the popular press as a landmark achievement. I learned tonight that there are clinical labs in the US that are now sequencing the complete genome of a patient for diagnostic reasons. Incredible! The challenge? It's not so much the time and effort of sequencing, which has been cut dramatically in recent years through major advances in gene-sequencing technology. It's the fact that there are at least 20,000 protein-coding genes in the human genome that could potentially be clinically significant for a given individual. Doing the detailed analysis to find out which one is really causing a particular disorder that is being observed at the time - and why - is still a huge task. That it is being done at all this way, by sequencing the entire genome, consisting of just over 3 billion DNA base pairs, for a single patient, is truly amazing.

Another very interesting conversation had to do with clinically relevant research that is being carried on in Saskatchewan with remote rural and First Nations communities with respect to methadone treatment protocols for patients with drug addiction, and, in separate studies, biochemical mechanisms related to fetal alcohol syndrome. So much care must be made to fully understand and describe potential linkages between clinical observation and genetic variations within families that may, if done right, be of tremendous value in defining the underlying pharmaceutics that can lead to improving treatment for these patients.

Tomorrow is the first full day that Hilary is attending the conference. I am, therefore, free to wander aimlessly around San Diego. Its should be fun!