FORGET DOGS: THE MOUSE IS MAN'S BEST FRIEND

Linda and cousin Elsie Rodney, on a good Borrego flower walk

I’m writing this while eating a pastrami sandwich at Fred Hutch. 

I have just returned from puzzling through a talk by a young man who is interviewing for a faculty position here.  He didn’t seem as nervous as your typical faculty candidate, possibly because he has been a post-doctoral  research fellow for at least six years and may have given this report or something like it  many, many times.  He gave what I judge to be an excellent talk, although you must realize that I understood perhaps 10% of it.  Its title was Regulation of Epithelial Growth in Development and Cancer.  I came away with the following observations:
 

1)      Mankind owes an immense debt of gratitude to the mouse.  I don’t know how many mice and mouse embryos bit the dust to further this research, but it was a lot.  With cancer researchers in full cry, who needs cats?
 

2)       Biology – at least the kind I’m involved with – seems to be largely in the data-gathering stage of scientific  development, even more so than geology tends to be.   They seem to test large communities of bio-things – proteins, mostly, I think – to see which ones are active in either turning on or turning off the rapid cell division that result in cancer.  These, then, they trace back to the genes that produce the proteins (oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes, respectively.)    This, in turn, eventually may allow them to design treatments more specific to the type of cancer in question.  See, for instance, my latest posting about using intra-cellular DNA “computers” to recognize and destroy cervical cancer.

On another note entirely, there will be a fun-run/walk to raise money for (and awareness of) ovarian cancer on July  27, 2012.  It is sponsored by the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research at Swedish Hospital. The race course wends its way through some of the more interesting parts of Seattle.  It is only 5 km long; even with my  two titanium hips and a cane I could do it, but likely won't.  For details go to www.summerun.org,  You can enter as an individual, or as a team.  I guess the idea is to get people to pledge contributions, perhaps contingent upon something happening or not happening:, e.g.   “Beck, if you can manage to finish the course in less than 90 minutes I’ll donate $90.  Otherwise, you do!”  It’s a good excuse to visit Seattle.  Free parking!

You people reading this on Facebook, r3member I wrote this two years ago.