Wednesday, September 5th, 2012
Central Park East - 7:15am

Good morning!  I'm thinking about doing a three part installment - a trilogy if you will - on what the project is that I'm working on right now in the lab.  Sometimes explaining what I do is difficult.  Once I was in a bookstore with a friend and the cashier noticed me speaking with my friend about my project, she immediately piped up and asked me what it was about.  Rather than excited, I'm sad to admit that these types of situations make me a bit anxious.  I have to immediately gauge what I think the person knows about science and tailor my story so that it is - hopefully - understandable.  This is where it gets tricky.  Assume they know only a little - you come off as patronizing.  Assume they know more than what they actually do - you come off as some sort of pretentious scientist - or even worse... since you lose them, your story is boring.

At dinner with Brian's family the other day, I was fumbling over my words trying to explain my project to Brian's Dad.  As I'm trying to tell my story, I'm thinking, "He was an organic chemist...am I explaining too much/too little?"  My issue is complicated by the fact that my project is part computational - meaning that I mention the words "mathematical modelling, programming, quantitative."  Those are typically "Stop listening now while you've still got the chance words."  Brian, to my surprise, chimed in and eloquently explained the overarching goals of the modelling side of my project in about 2 minutes.  I was surprised and impressed.  Brevity is always the right strategy to go with.

I'll tell you 3 short vignettes that comprise my overarching story right now in the lab. 

Part I - What the f*ck is a T cell and why should I care?  I forget what a cell is and what it looks like. 

Well, calm down, I'll tell you.

Your entire body is made up of cells.  Your dog's body is made up of cells.  Your basil plant on the windowsill is made out of cells.  Fishes bodies are made out of cells.  Insects and spider's bodies are made out of cells.  Bacteria are made out of a single cell.  Viruses are NOT cells.  You can't see cells with your naked eye - you need a microscope. 

Lets zoom in to YOUR cells.  Think of your cells as basketballs that contain a tennis ball (a nucleus), and that nucleus contains your DNA.  EVERY cell in your body has the same DNA, it's just that different parts of that code are being expressed at any given time to make parts of you unique - your heart is different from your stomach or your skin.

One important type of cell is the lymphocyte.  Lymph-o-cytes.  LYMPH refers to where they home and what part of system they are part of - the immune or LYMPHATIC system.  They circulate around your body and "home" to your Lymph nodes when you're sick.  That's why your lymph nodes swell up when you have an infection - they're full of cells.  "Cyte" is a suffix that stems from the Greek "cyta" which means "jar" or "container" and refers to cell.  The cell is a container for your genetic material that makes you what you are.  One type of lymphocyte is the B cell - B cells make antibodies.  When you get a vaccination, the goal is to make a B cell remember that bad thing that it saw because if it see's it again it will respond (make antibodies) faster than the first time around.  Think of antibodies as molecular glue - they glop up pathogens (bacteria, viruses, toxins, venoms), and make it easier for your body to get rid of them.

The other type of lymphocyte is the T cell.  T cells do 2 major things:
1.  They help B cells make antibodies.
2.  They recognize when your body's own cells are infected with viruses and they kill those infected cells so that the virus doesn't spread. 
Also an interesting little fact, T cells are the cells that are infected by HIV.  That is why people with HIV eventually develop AIDS - Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome and will die of infections secondary to the actual HIV.  The virus kills the individuals' T cells so that over time, they can no longer fight off infections.  People with AIDS get infections that no one with a healthy immune system would ever develop. 

When T cells are activated (realize that they have a job to do - get rid of an invading pathogen), they respond by replicating and making more and more of themselves.  One T cell might divide 5-10 times in the time span of about 3-5 days.  Your cells divide much slower than Bacteria - E. coli can divide once every 20 minutes or about 70 times per day!!!

How do T cells know they should divide, though?  How do they tell other T cells near them that they should also divide and make more of themselves to fight off the impending infection?  They make a signal and they secrete or push out that signal towards other cells in the immediate vicinity (the lymph node is where this all happens).  For T cells, that signal to multiply is called Interleukin 2.  "Inter" means between and "leukin" refers to lymphocytes - "between lymphocytes." 2 just designates it as different than other Interleukins (there are many).  Here's your drawing to sum up today's story.

That was short, right??

Have a great day!  Stay tuned for tomorrow's episode:  "What the f*ck does any of this have to do with Jen's research?"