We took advantage of an acquaintance today to make a field trip to the NIEHS Core Sequencing Facility in Research Triangle Park.  We were royally hosted by the head of the group, and sat down with him and some of his lab people to hear them describe how they go about their sequencing tasks and the new technology that seems to blossom each day.  It was absolutely amazing to discover that many of the terms and concepts that he described were things that we have become at least passingly familiar during our externship.  (We also scored some awesome surplus lab stuff to take back to our classrooms!)  The whole field of rapid genome sequencing and the amazing technical advances really boggle the mind!  How cool it is to have experience with current practices to inform our basic instruction in the classroom.  As our host very astutely put it, “you guys (as teachers) are training my replacement!”