Saturday I had an interesting opportunity to observe a teacher and scientist in her element. Tin Tin does research on fruit flies in order to understand how a cell protects the information stored in DNA. A fruit fly has a generation about every 10 days, they are good subjects to study and they have characteristic and visible genetic markers that are easy to follow. I am sure there are other reasons why Tin Tin selected the fruit fly, but these seem like good starters. Anyway, according to Tin Tin, if we can understand how a normal (non-mutated) cell survives and cause radiation or chemicals to attack mutated cells, well, then we may have some insight to how to fight cancer.

The picture shows us fruit fly cell mitosis.

A couple of reason why I enjoyed very much seeing her in her element:  First, she is very good at what she does. Next, I have two small daughters and she brought the science down to their level and had them teaching me about fruit flies. Next, what she does is look for ways to fight cancer. She does this using science, technology and inspiration.

I am always humbled by these kinds of things. I think that doing good work, working with good people and working on interesting problems is almost the only thing we can ask for in a job. In life it is a bit more complicated and we can ask for a loving family, healthy kids, trash goals when we play hockey and a nice bottle of Zin every once in a while. Sorting fruit flies and looking at dead bugs is fascinating. It isn't very glamorous (in the traditional sense) but, at the end of the day, this kind of science and invention is indescribably beautiful. And, looking at cell division and maybe, just maybe, coming up with the next significant medical breakthrough, well, that is pretty damn cool. I looked around at the lab, and I have to admit, I was disappointed not to see a single Sun product. We need to fix that.

.