Disjointed Mind Blather

1) I am one week away from a solid habit of being mostly drunk by 6p each Friday evening.

2) Drunk people aren't nearly as interesting as they think they are, except for me. Apparently I am fascinating (people keep talking to me). I've been partying with the other young scientists lately at bonfires, and I am quite impressed at (almost) everybody's ability to retain their scientific acumen whilst sloshed. I got into an argument last night with a plasma physicist about nuclear fusion and had to resort to using immunology jargon as an escape hatch.

3) I regret not going to ASM. I would have had to pay my own way, but now around the labs its like everyone else has seen the newest, coolest movie and I have to just nod along and pretend like I know what they're talking about. I've been poking through the literature of the talks that keep getting mentioned, but this is frustrating because the papers are always ~18 months behind the actual science that was seen at the conference.

4) Apparently I'm a good teacher in the lab. In the past week I have taught a complete lab n00b everything from how to micropipette to DNA extractions. I've also somehow become the departmental point-man on immunofluorescence, which I guess makes sense since experts are only experts because they've made and fixed all the possible mistakes and invented new ones.

5) I do not have enough projects in the laboratory. I want to be busier, or at least doing something that will turn out data. The ELISA I've been trying to develop has been a long series of failures with non-specific binding of antibodies that are supposedly specific at every turn. I've been putting a lot of time into it, but still, it requires some very long incubation times that I'd rather be doing something else useful during.

6) At this point I suspect that my wash buffer isn't washy enough (0.5% Tween-20 in 1X PBS). I'm tempted to reformulate it but haven't yet figured out what I could use that wouldn't also destroy the proteins I'm trying to get to stick together. It's also possible I'm being entirely too gentle with the plates. I've been pipetting 300ul wash buffer into each well 3X. Maybe I should be flooding a flat dish with wash buffer, plopping the plate down face first and shaking it like I'm trying to drown a Gremlin.

7) On that note, the Megablocking Buffer I made up works beautifully (for immunofluorescence at least). It contains 1% FBS, 1% BSA, 1% NGS in 1X PBS.

8) I bought a little Crassula monstrosa the other day. It's so freakishly cute! I have no idea what to name it.

9) The Dirtbombs are awesome. I have been stuck on their music for the past several months. I don't entirely know why they have 2 bass players and 2 drummers, but I don't really care either.


10) I'm really hoping that the PIs in my favorite Friday meeting decide to make another schedule and keep meeting throughout the summer because it's really my favorite meeting of the week. Vaguely: it's several PIs with tangentially similar interests coming together to float data, research proposals, and grants before each other and their labs and hash them out. It's really cool to get to see the bigger context of everyone's research and hear, and take part in, the discussion of the big ideas in the field. It's an escape from daily lab notebook tedium.

11) Speaking of which, I have really got to find a better way to keep notes in the lab. I tend to print out protocols and make notes on them as I'm doing the protocols and then collate them into binders, but then to also write down everything else on a growing stack of legal pads. So far I haven't been copying from one to the other to save paper because I feel bad using so much of it, but perhaps it's worth it. I also feel bad about printing out papers to read, but that's the only way I can make my notes in the margins and strike out what's important. Papers I read tend to have blocks and arrows and doodles going all over the place synthesizing the information (well, the good papers, at least) and until I save up enough for a nice Wacom tablet there's no other way for me to do this. Maybe there are alternatives?

Cover Meme

I've been tagged with the cover meme. The bad covers I have selected here are so cringingly horrible that I'm going to present them first.

To begin with, Marilyn Manson is a douchebag. He built his career on destroying wonderful songs by turning them into febrile little coals to warm his own ego and being the ugliest drag queen/self-injuring attention diva in the business. The bastard ruined one of my favorite songs, "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics.

Compounding the douchebaggery, Universal Music Group promoted this shit actively, and has disabled embedded. You can watch 50 unnecessary costume changes and a desperate plea for attention here instead.

Secondly, Coal Chamber. Now, Coal Chamber is not an intelligent band, nor are they talented. This was evident when they released a song simply entitled "Big Truck". It's about big trucks. But then they had to go and compound their inanity by recruiting one of the most annoying voices in rock and roll, Ozzy Osbourne, to ruin a perfectly good Peter Gabriel song, "Shock the Monkey".

This was entirely unnecessary and the world would be a happier place with it. This is a band that not only shouldn't have a comeback, but should have simply never been.

And now that we're done with bad covers and you've all cleaned the vomit off of the walls, let us turn to amazing covers that stun me with their brilliance.

First, a cover of Public Enemy's* "Black Steel in a Time of Chaos" (original here). This song, in its original context, was powerful enough. But then Tricky, originally a member of Massive Attack, covered it. Embedding has been disabled by request, so the video is here.

Secondly, I'm generally impressed when someone pulls off a cover from one instrumentation to another, completely different, instrument set. For example, if someone covered a Missy Elliott (e.g., Gossip Folks) song with a trombone and xylophone, I'd be impressed enough to listen. As such, I find this excellently done cover of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" by Rasputina to be epic beautiful.


*For any that don't know Public Enemy, they also did "Fight the Power" which you might probably know.

Most Nefarious Competition

This will not do.

NOT AT ALL!

Some of you may have noticed a recent poll over at the cave of mein übel-(ekel)-archenemy Mein Hermitage. The poll asked: "Who's more nefarious? Toaster, Hermitage, Ninjas, or Pirates?"

This results are in, and Hermie and I have tied.

TIED!!!

How is this even possible when I am clearly far more nefarious than her!?

So to settle this, we had a cease-fire dinner of cookies and Bento and discussed methods by which we might resolve this. Although we each generated several good ideas, from a race to discover a new metazoan species and then find a way to cook it to a giant robot battle tournament to an air guitar competition, we also found that each of these proposals lacked one critical element to ensure a fair outcome: that of transparency.

Without transparency we could each easily engage in heinous subterfuge and use our respective resources to set traps. As such, we eventually found, the fairest way to settle this matter is a Battle of Scientific Acumen and Wit!!!!!!!!!!!!

Therefore Hermie and I will be facing off in the commons of the Internet and battling through the cyber journal club format, one round only, winner takes title of Most Nefarious*.

But we need your help. Dear reader, we are surrendering the material and terms of this contest to you. Here's how it'll work:

1) Submit interesting and substantial papers to Hermitage and I. For the sake of fairness it should be something outside of our respective purviews (Hermie = Peruvian Flying Fish, Toaster = Immunology).
2) Hermitage and I will publicly deliberate upon the papers and choose one to compete upon. This part may take a while.
3) We will each post a blog entry about the paper.
4) You will judge it, and by extension, us. We understand that some of you may have mixed loyalties, so to make it fair, each reader gets 100 points that they can divide between Hermie and I as they see fit. Points can simply be assigned in comments, which will remain open for 96h following posting.
5) Winner will be chosen by who has more points.

So reach into that stack of papers you keep meaning to eventually read and send them on in. This matter MUST be settled!

*Trophy to be displayed in blog side-bar.

Toaster's Ear!

Figure A: Swab of Toaster's left ear. No visible earwax on swab after swabbing. TSAII/5%SB plate cultured ~48h at 37C, 5%CO2. Note 2 distinct colony morphologies, no hemolysis or swarming.

Your Microbiome and You

You are never alone. Not even when you might want to be. Tucked away within the ~100m² of your bowels are ~10¹⁴ (there are ~10¹³ somatic and germinal cells in the human body) of your closest friends, collectively termed The Microbiota. They eat, spawn, conjugate, die, poop, fight, and secrete right there inside of you, unseen and mostly unthought of except when something is wrong. This system, the remarkably homeostatic mammalian gut, forms what is perhaps the densest and most complex microbial ecology on this planet.

These teeming microbes are not mere freeloaders living off of your access at their own convenience, they are true symbionts. In exchange for a warm, wet home and nutritional supply, they break down starches for us, metabolize complex molecules, and synthesize some key compounds, such as Vitamin K. It has been found that gnotobiotic, or germ-free, animal models require ~30% more calories to develop normally without a microbiota to help them out. In humans that have been on a broad-spectrum antibiotics, hardier inhabitants (such as Clostridium difficile) can bloom when all of their more sensitive neighbors (such as Bacteroides spp. and Bifidobacterium spp.) are killed off, which causes very unpleasant colitis and diarrhea, that can then be cured by a transplant of fresh microbiota from a healthy individual (colloquially referred to as "poop soup"). Microbiome transplants can also transfer physiological characteristics from one individual to another. For example, the microbiomes of obese individuals have been found to have reduced numbers of Bacteroidales spp., and transfer of these microbiota via poop soup into germ-free mice resulted in obese mice, theoretically because these microbiota were more efficient at releasing calories from food.

Microbes exist, or can exist, in virtually every segment of the gastrointestinal tract from mouth to anus. In the mouth, a variety of Actinomyces spp. are associated with the formation of plaque. In the forbidding and harsh environment of the stomach, only Helicobacter pylori can thrive (it does so by hiding among the mucous lining the stomach and modulating the host immune response) and it has been found to directly cause stomach ulcers and has been further implicated in the formation of gastric cancers (it's the only organism classified as a BSL 2+ carcinogen). The proximal portion of the small bowel is relatively sparsely colonized at ~10⁴-10⁵ microorganisms/ml lumenal contents, which contrasts sharply with the densely colonized colon (~10¹⁰-10¹² microbes/ml contents).

In the human and other mammals, diverse and distinct microbial ecologies also exist in the sinuses, ears, genitourinary tract (largely Lactobacillus spp. in the vagina; the bladder is generally only colonized in disease states [long-term catherization and/or pyelonephritis] by uropathogenic Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabalis, et al), and on the skin as a whole (mostly Staphylococcus spp.). These others will, however, be excluded from the present discussion.

However, what's very puzzling about all of this is: how does the mammalian immune system manage to differentiate from the massive basal antigenic signals coming from the microbiome from pathogenic antigens? In other words, why isn't the immune system raging against the huge number of microbial signals in the gut?

One of the exquisitely elegant features of normal gut physiology is that gut-associated lymphatic tissues (GALTs) mediate fine-tuned hyporesponsiveness to commensal microbiota while remaining responsive to pathogenic microbes. This flies directly in the face of most immunology, which holds that microbial antigens will always provoke a stimulatory response when ligated to TLRs, CLRs, or NODs (conserved receptors of the immune system that bind conserved molecular patterns associated with pathogens). In vitro data support this. Physiology doesn't.

Physiologically, the germ-free mouse is weird. A germ-free animal is one that has been reared in an environment completely free of all microbes, fungi, and exogenous viruses and as such they have no native intestinal microbiota. Not only do they require more calories and vitamin supplementation, but they also tend to accumulate undigested fibrotic material in their ceca, which predisposes them to gut twists and bloat. Additionally, they feature underdeveloped Peyer's patches (distinct GALT sites on the gastric mucosa), altered CD4+ T-cell and IgA-producing B-cell population profiles, and the follicles in the spleen and lymph nodes where T- and B-cells mature are poorly formed. All of these abnormalities can be rescued by adding back microbial signals such as LPS, even without the microbes themselves. Due to these alterations, it is becoming accepted that the microbiome plays a crucial role in the normal development of the immune system. But to reconcile this with the dogma of microbial signal + PRR ---> inflammatory immune reaction is somewhat difficult, or at the very least complex.

Immune cells that reside in the lamina propria underneath the gastric epithelium generally show signs of recent activation and a particular subset of dendritic cells (CX3CR1+) has been found to extend dendritic processes up through the tight junctions binding gastric columnar epithelial cells together to directly sample the lumenal contents. M cells that cap the Peyer's patches have been found to shuttle lumenal contents, and any antigens contained therein, to the dendritic cells and lymphocytes underneath. These pathways of antigen exposure are thought to be involved in the induction of immunological tolerance to microbiotal antigens, which could explain why the immune system does not attack the commensal microbiota. However, it does not explain how pathogen antigens processed by the same pathways are recognized as pathogenic and stimulate the immune system to attack.

Recent evidence strongly suggests that the intestinal epithelium itself is responsible for the differentiation of nonpathogenic microbiota from pathogens. Canonically, the intestinal epithelium is thought of as a simple barrier that is involved in the absorption and transcytosis of metabolites and nutrients. But it seems that it is much more involved that we had previously believed.

It turns out that intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) express TLRs and directly modulate the composition of the microbiome itself as well as the responsiveness of immune cells. This ranges from TLR expression on Paneth cells in the small intestine that secrete potent antimicrobial molecules (RegIIIg) when ligated [Dr. Lora Hooper, in seminar given 11/19/08] to actual expression of MHCII and direct antigen presentation. It was previously believed that MHCII expression was restricted to antigen presentation by dendritic cells.

When investigators deleted TLR4, NOD1, or MyD88 (an adapter protein involved in many TLR-mediated NF-kB inflammatory pathways) in murine IECs they found that the mice were more susceptible to bacterial infections, which implies that the TLR signalling on the IECs is essentially to the development of normal protective immunity. A second feature of this is that IEC TLRs and NODs are located intracellularly, instead of on the cell surface as in immune cells, which means that they'd only be ligated and activated when an invasive pathogenic microbe breaks into the IECs themselves (e.g., Salmonella typhimurium, Vibrio cholerae) as opposed to the more peaceful commensals. It may be that noninvasive gastrointestinal pathogens are recognized by the proteins that they shoot into IECs via Type IV secretions systems (e.g., Tir and Escherichia coli O157:H7) in the same manner.

The commensal microbiota is also at work on the IECs themselves, actively acting against IEC-mediated inflammation. Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron has been found to induce the PPARg anti-inflammatory (acts by increasing cytoplasmic shuttling of pro-inflammatory NF-kB away from the nucleus) mechanism in vitro. Commensal-derived metabolites such as butyrate (a short-chain fatty acid) have been found to inhibit expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and increase expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines in IECs.

It is now thought that IECs regulate dendritic cell function through secretion of thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) and modulate T-cell activity through expression of MHCII in the abscence of costimulatory molecules. TLSP acts directly on dendritic cells and inhibits their production of pro-inflammatory cytokines (such as IL-12), which in turn promotes dendritic-cell-mediated activation of regulatory T-cells. TSLP is also implicated in skewing the immune response to a T_H2-type T-cell response, which is implicated in both response to metazoan parasites and pulmonary atopy. If naive T-cells are being exposed to MHCII on IECs without co-stimulatory molecules, then the T-cells will either kill themselves off (anergy) or mature into tolerogenic T-cells that limit the immune response to those given antigens. This, combined with widespread TGFb secretion by IECs, directly indicates an active role for IECs in promoting immune system hyporesponsiveness to the antigens present in the gastrointestinal system. Without this direct suppression of active, inflammatory immune responses, the immune system would be in a continual inflammation state due to not knowing what to do with a safe commensal antigen vs. a dangerous pathogenic antigen. Indeed, emerging research indicates that dysregulation of this process may underlie the pathophysiologies of inflammatory bowel disease and Crohn's disease.

It'll be interesting to see what's found next.

Artis, D. (2008). Epithelial-cell recognition of commensal bacteria and maintenance of immune homeostasis in the gut Nature Reviews Immunology, 8 (6), 411-420 DOI: 10.1038/nri2316

Loyalty vs. Opportunity

So about a month ago my boss told me I should probably start looking for other jobs because the only grant funding we had left was due to expire this coming Sunday. I went home and sent out a flurry of graceful applications to as many jobs as I could find posted in the area. Since then the lab has been rescued by an ARRA-funded challenge grant. Now, though, I'm beginning to hear back from the positions I applied to.

The new grant in my current lab presents me with new opportunities to expand upon techniques I've already learned and finally generate some real data. But at the same time, these other positions potentially represent very real opportunities to sink my teeth into an entirely new system and expand my skill set. My current position is applied immunology/microbiology, the potential positions are more basic immunology.

I find myself caught between loyalty to my current boss--who has taught me quite a lot but at the same time also left me alone in the lab and expected me to move mountains with chopsticks (and no glue to make a bigger lever)--and feeling that moving into another lab with another PI and even broader immunological focus would make my application to graduate school this fall stronger. However, this premise itself could be false. I know that in looking for a job, it's a major black mark to have drifted among several labs for short periods of times; but is the same true for graduate schools? I've spent 2 years in the current lab, if you combine the time I have spent here as an undergraduate student, temp, and staff. Would the grad school admission committee see my moving into another lab shortly before applying as a negative quality?

I'm tempted to send out the information requested and attend any interviews I am offered. If they wish to follow up my references, of which my boss is one, I will let her know that she may be getting some calls. Yet I worry that doing so will endanger a good recommendation letter from her.

Therefore I find myself at somewhat of an impasse.

UPDATE: I went ahead and sent out the requested information and affirmed my interest in the position. It's not even an interview yet, so maybe I'm making chromosomes out of oligomers. But still, it's a research assistantship instead of tech position, so I feel it is wisest to pursue it and see what may come of it.

Toaster vs. Bobbin

Please place your bets now before reading further.

So Toaster has been in an unproductive funk lately that he has been filling with video games and whiskey. This happens from time to time, usually when I'm low on Cookie Power and I'm used to it; it always passes fairly soon. Maybe these periods are just subconscious protective mechanisms to keep me from overclocking too often and burning out. Or perhaps its a visceral reaction whenever I look at the towering stack of papers I mean to read and blog, eventually. Either way, it's no big deal, although it is interesting that, with the help of whiskey, I've entered a stable biphasic sleep schedule where I take a nap of ~2 sleep cycles in the late evening then remain up most of the night, only laying back down at dawn for ~3 sleep cycles before awaking completely refreshed and ready to go. I spent most of last night with my sketchbook trying to break out of this creative ennui and failed to do so, although now my desk is covered in a lovely sheen of eraser shreds.

Anyway, given this state of affairs, I've been trying to get around and finally do some of the chores that I've been putting off. One of these chores is sewing. A particularly irritating consequence of my lanky stature is that clothes very rarely fit me right off of the rack. If I want a shirt that has long enough sleeves, I must buy something that hangs about my torso like a tent while if I want a shirt that doesn't flap about in the wind it is usually far too short. I've even tried those "athletic fit" and "trim fit" shirts and they're almost as bad, just very slightly less so. Dress shirts are especially bad about this. To remedy this, I learned how to sew so that I could take in the excess fabric on the sides of the shirts. I can usually cut out 8" of material and the shirt is still loose. I have several shirts that don't fit well at all and the novelty of flapping them about like I'm a flying squirrel has lost its appeal.

Enter the bobbin.

I had* an old sewing machine from an aunt. I used to know how to use it. Apparently I haven't used it so long that I've completely forgotten the basics of setting it up. I started out with the machine set up completely backwards and then noticed that the bobbin was not threaded through the needle plunger hole thingy. Sewing machines are not meant for large clumsy man hands, so I was sitting there trying to guide the bobbin thread into what I thought was the proper channel with two straight pins. I thought I had it right, and tried starting the machine up only to have a large knot form instantaneously. About a half hour of cleaning knots up and trying to fix things to prevent them from happening ensued. Finally, I RTFMed and in the process managed to slam my thumb in the sewing machine case with the entire weight of the the bastard crashing down on it. RTFMing didn't help much because even after that, even after I'd managed to thread the bobbin and pull the threat through the right part of the machine, the thread started falling off of the needle. I would have the needle threaded, then it would go into the machine and disappear into a lovely new knot, somehow remaining connected to the spool while getting out of the eye of the needle and the other end of the thread in my other hand. Magic shit.

I am ashamed to say that I gave up because it was going nowhere slowly. I mean, who designed this? Even FACSDiva is more intuitive! And then the bobbin ran out of thread, and I didn't want to try to reload it and risk injuring myself in the process. So I wound up hand-stitching shut some of the holes in other shirts (armpit holes, so not worth throwing away yet).

Yeah, the bobbin won.

Bastard.

*Yep: past tense.
**For the noobs among us, RTFM refers to "read the fucking manual" and is commonly used when noobs go to free tech support forums and ask inane questions that could easily be answered if they'd looked in the ware's documentation first.

P.S. - Arikia, you are correct: armwarmers do indeed increase one's typing speed.

Toaster Revealed

Oh noes!

Arikia Millikan done blogged me!

The invasion was surprisingly easy, I'd expected greater resistance from the native population. Instead the soldiers manning the defenses left their posts to join the streaming crowds basking in the glow of our wonderous glory and welcomed us as their new overlords.

Phase I of Plan Lunar Domination* complete!

Extra special post-script note thingy: Hermitage is trying to prove who's more nefarious by polling. Options are Toaster, Hermitage, Ninjas, and Pirates. Dear readers, you all know who is far more nefarious. So please, be true to that knowledge and go crash that poll!

Post-post script: I may or may not still be drunkish from myself and Arikias' wonderous invasion, and I don't know whether it's from the smoke of ten thousand votive incenses burning or the power. This is the state of Schroedinger's Sobriety.

*Better suggestions for a lunar domination plan (because earthly world domination has too many people to govern and control) are being crowdsourced, so send in your suggestions today! The winner will receive a free caricature of their choosing (Toaster and Arikia excluded from choosingnessability).

Toaster Ventures Outside

So Toaster summoned up the courage to leave the comfy Internet and Hyrule* last night to venture out into the real world. I went to a local metal concert with a group of assorted scientists. The headlining band was fucking awesome, and I have nothing but deep respect for a bass player who rocks out on a home-made upright electric flying V and uses walking bass-lines and 4-finger syncopated picking in progressive instrumental metal: you are 1337. HOWEVER, the other bands' bass players lead me to a question that, as a Mad Scientist who also plays bass guitar, is important to me: why is the bass player in 95% of all rock bands the dorkiest person on stage? Is this some requirement that I was never told about? Because 1) I think I'm far too pretty handsome to be that awkward when I'm having fun and 2) I couldn't even look that dorky if I tried.

Maybe I'd be less critical if the music your band had played had been more interesting, but really you weren't interesting enough to be an instrumental metal band, and ripping off of Chevelle, poorly, barely qualifies you as metal. Wearing a lounge shirt, driver's cap, and red pants was not helping your case. And seriously, did you polish your instruments before you got on stage!? Mr. Dorky Bass Player, your lead guitarist was playing the flame-top maple semi-hollow body Gibson Les Paul that every whiny bastard whinges for Christmas, the rhythm guitarist (was he even awake?) was playing a shiny new red Gibson SG**, and you yourself were playing a through-body high-model Ibanez. Which brings me to another point: you played an Ibanez, yet you didn't even slap bass once! WHAT THE FUCK!? That bass was made for that kind of playing, and you completely ignored it. And don't even get me started on your dubious choice of amplifiers.

And yeah, I saw you all get upset and sour when the lead band came on, turning away with feigned indifference trying to cover up your wounded egoes. Next to them you looked like slime mold on the ass of Aphrodite. Maybe I'm also upset at you for playing crappy music while they were doing their pre-show yoga. At least your set was short. For that much, I thank you.

*Spending an evening slashing away at Bulbins and Bokoblins usually seems simpler than interacting with people.
**Disclosure: I have a red Gibson SG sitting in my instrument rack, but mine is old and chipped. I traded my old Yamaha bass guitar for it from Pikkuveli. It can be heard in "Mad Scientist Personal Ad" here.

Story of Toaster: Self Experimentation #2

[Neither Toaster nor Hammer endorse trying this at home.]

Looking back at this, I can fully admit how absolutely stupid it was to try. This stupidity was compounded by collaboration with my good friend, whom we shall here refer to as Hammer Fishplate, that endangered both of our lives. In our defense, it should be noted that we were 16-year-old boys with a car, so perhaps stupidity was entirely unavoidable. But at least it was stupidity in the Name of Science!

Our hometown was completely dominated by aviation, and as such we grew up well aware of the principles of Bernoulli and aerodynamics (our middle school even had a wind tunnel). So one night after having lost the competition to see who could push my car the fastest, I proposed that we try steering said car by altering its aerodynamic profile by using the car doors as ailerons*.

So we got some tacos and thought about it.

Since we couldn't come up with any good reasons not to try this, we conducted the experiment. We rolled up all the windows in my car and went to the straightest, widest stretch of local branch of the interstate highway. It was well past midnight so there was absolutely no traffic. Hammer was in the passenger seat while I drove. I floored the car and got it up to 38m/s (since we had reasoned the effects would be negligible at lower velocities). Then Hammer pushed his car door open while I held the steering wheel straight. The car veered gently left! SUCCESS! So then he let his door get slammed shut by the wind and leaned over to grab the wheel while I pushed my own door open (this is difficult to do at 38m/s). Sure enough, the car veered right! DOUBLE SUCCESS!!!

The natural extension of this was to see if we could steer the car productively by this method. There was a large bend coming up in the highway branch, so we gamely took it on and sure enough: it's manageable, if difficult. We wound up drifting across several empty lanes and coming rather close to the concrete median, but we made it nonetheless.

Later on we tried a negative control and repeated the experiment at a much lower velocity (8m/s). It didn't work at all and I'm fairly sure the gas station attendant didn't much appreciate our quest for Science.

Conclusion: yes, car doors may be used as ailerons, but only at sufficiently high velocities.

[Neither Toaster nor Hammer endorse trying this at home.]

Relevant: Story of Toaster: Self Experimentation #1