January 2, 2025
I earned a BA in English and MS in biochemistry at UC Riverside and then worked in San Diego mol biol labs at the dawn of the molecular age (back when people thought RNA was boring!). After working briefly at Houston's Baylor Medical College I returned to California to earn a PhD in Biomedical Sciences at UC San Diego (UCSD).
I started grad school wanting to learn EVERYTHING about p53 but in the end did thesis work on a transcription factor that regulates neuronal differentiation. I then did research as a postdoc at Salk Institute in La Jolla where I worked on transcriptional activity of the Notch receptor.
My fellowship ended as the chromatin revolution hit with the "invention" of ChIP. I then left the bench to pursue writing but still regret that I never did benchwork in a chromatin lab. Luckily, as an editor I do that vicariously, as many of my clients work in epigenetics-related fields or in characterizing 3-D chromatin structure.
In the early 2000's I took a full-time writing job in LA at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center (COH), led in part by the late Art Riggs, an epigenetics pioneer. There, I learned exponentially about cancer, first writing COH news stories in Communications and then as a grant writer of peer-reviewed proposals to private funders, like The V Foundation, Stand Up to Cancer, and Sidney Kimmel. I left COH to work remotely in Nashville 10 years ago. Since then, as a freelancer (although I still have COH clients) I have helped scientists write effective grants and papers in the fields of cancer, stem cell biology, chromatin dynamics and cell signaling, just to name a few.
I strongly support BASIC biological science, because, without it, there would be no clinical advances. For example, in the 70s basic scientists determined structure of retroviruses and learned how they replicate (and won a Nobel for it), a decade before it became news these viruses caused an incurable disease, namely AIDS. And although 40 years later we still have no vaccine, knowing how retroviruses replicate hastened development of the triple cocktail, making AIDS a manageable disease. And LONG before Covid arrived in 2019, basic scientists tested the feasibility of creating something crazy, namely, an mRNA-based vaccine. Which is how Moderna became a household word.
Working with people who are passionate about important work is a joy. I have deep gratitude for every client who trusts me to read, edit or comment on their manuscript. I thank you all!
I earned a BA in English and MS in biochemistry at UC Riverside and then worked in San Diego mol biol labs at the dawn of the molecular age (back when people thought RNA was boring!). After working briefly at Houston's Baylor Medical College I returned to California to earn a PhD in Biomedical Sciences at UC San Diego (UCSD).
I started grad school wanting to learn EVERYTHING about p53 but in the end did thesis work on a transcription factor that regulates neuronal differentiation. I then did research as a postdoc at Salk Institute in La Jolla where I worked on transcriptional activity of the Notch receptor.
My fellowship ended as the chromatin revolution hit with the "invention" of ChIP. I then left the bench to pursue writing but still regret that I never did benchwork in a chromatin lab. Luckily, as an editor I do that vicariously, as many of my clients work in epigenetics-related fields or in characterizing 3-D chromatin structure.
In the early 2000's I took a full-time writing job in LA at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center (COH), led in part by the late Art Riggs, an epigenetics pioneer. There, I learned exponentially about cancer, first writing COH news stories in Communications and then as a grant writer of peer-reviewed proposals to private funders, like The V Foundation, Stand Up to Cancer, and Sidney Kimmel. I left COH to work remotely in Nashville 10 years ago. Since then, as a freelancer (although I still have COH clients) I have helped scientists write effective grants and papers in the fields of cancer, stem cell biology, chromatin dynamics and cell signaling, just to name a few.
I strongly support BASIC biological science, because, without it, there would be no clinical advances. For example, in the 70s basic scientists determined structure of retroviruses and learned how they replicate (and won a Nobel for it), a decade before it became news these viruses caused an incurable disease, namely AIDS. And although 40 years later we still have no vaccine, knowing how retroviruses replicate hastened development of the triple cocktail, making AIDS a manageable disease. And LONG before Covid arrived in 2019, basic scientists tested the feasibility of creating something crazy, namely, an mRNA-based vaccine. Which is how Moderna became a household word.
Working with people who are passionate about important work is a joy. I have deep gratitude for every client who trusts me to read, edit or comment on their manuscript. I thank you all!