Hearing my peers explain their research this past week was quite a treat. Not only did I get to learn more about what everyone has been spending the majority of their time doing for the past month, but I also got to appreciate how far we have all come in such a short amount of time in understanding what research is like.
In particular, I really appreciated Erin’s project. What struck me as fascinating about this project is how research projects can use extremely specific techniques to target a hugely applicable question. Erin explained that biologists care about 4 major parts of cell life: apoptosis, DNA methylation, DNA replication, and movement. Her project has a seemingly simple topic: to understand these processes better. To do this, her lab team uses fluorescent proteins fused to nanobodies. Those nanobodies target specific antigens, and the colors can then be seen under a confocal microscope to better understand the 4 processes listed above. Specifically, to learn more about cell shape they target actin, to learn more about DNA replication they target PCNA, to learn more about DNA methylation they target DNMT, and to learn more about the nucleus they target lamin.
As I sat listening to this talk I thought of all of the time Erin must spend in a dark room with a confocal microscope looking at the same teal, orange, yellow, and blue colors. More importantly, I thought about how worth it those hours of imaging would feel once serious conclusions are reached, and some part of nature that was previously less-understood is now that bit more-understood. It is the accumulation of these tiny bits of better understanding that lead in the long run to humans living healthier happier lives, with the body better understood. Science in this way transcends from the micro level of looking at colored cells under a microscope to learning more about how we can keep ourselves and future children from hearing the c-word at a doctor’s visit.
