The big cure for the big ‘C’

This time I'm not going to make any promises. I'm going to try and keep this place going better than I have done but I may get distracted again. There's a lot of fun stuff ahead, but it should mean you'll get to see me cropping up in other places very soon. In other news, if you didn't see it, I got a post on the Nature.com network on Monday which I'm very excited about. It's on the theme of new beginnings and organising my first conference.

I'd also like to say a quick hello to some of my readers that I've had the good fortune to meet around Cambridge since I last posted anything. I'm always surprised that people have actually heard of my ramblings and am glad that I'm not talking to myself here (although after so much inactivity that may have changed :S )

Anyway, people are always asking me if I've cured cancer yet. This is one of the things that my lab and many others are working towards, in a roundabout sense. But it seems likely that there will never be one cure for all cancer and here's why:

At the risk of being cliché, given all the recent media activity (which I have spectacularly missed the opportunity to write about), finding the ‘cure for cancer’ is to biology what the Higgs Boson was to particle physics. Everyone’s working on it and it means a lot – not just to our understanding of the universe, but to human healthcare – and it may not even exist.

People like to think there can be a simple pill that will fix any problem in life from cancer to cellulite, obesity to osteoarthritis (source).

It’s very nice and easy to think of one simple, easy to administer cure – this is the ultimate dream for many illnesses – but most diseases just aren’t that simple, in particular a ‘cure for cancer’ is a very misleading concept.  It suggests that cancer is one illness that is the same every time it occurs and therefore should have the same solution each time. Actually, there are probably as many cancers as there are people with cancer, with each one unique and different to any other, to some extent.

A Right Royal Easter Spring Conference

Hi everyone! Sorry for the neglect, I'm working on several things at the moment so this place has been a bit neglected (hides the cracks in the paintwork). Have no fear that I do have several things chasing each other round my brain and one or the other of them may actually make it into print shortly.

Firstly, the launch of the Easter issue of BlueSci is expected on Thursday, so it's been crazy getting that printed and making sure that the online version will be ready to go too. Thankfully I think I'm on top of that now, but that was quite a few evenings eaten.

Also, and probably most excitingly, I went to my first real, proper, grown-up conference over most of last week so what with the long hours I was a bit short on news hunting/writing time. I did however squeeze in time to write several daily pieces for ConferenceCast, which will be appearing over the next few days. It was really cool, focusing on Cell & Developmental biology so we had loads of great speakers (and the occasional dull one, but not everyone's perfect). The prize winners were all awesome and really interesting, especially the Beddington medal winning PhD student who used music to illustrate how well cells moved together during migration.

Now I finally get some time in my third and final lab of the year, 2 weeks after we offcially started, so it's going to be pretty intensive to try and get some results in just 7 weeks. Also I'm putting together a poster about the importance of science communication for a one day conference later in the week.

 I also had to watch the new series of Doctor Who, of course, which is fantastic, although like everyone else I have NO clue what's going on.

So if you've been missing my senseless ramblings you can pop over to ConferenceCast and see exactly what I've been up to and I promise to get my next proper piece up ASAP and to stop writing all about myself.

Me, myself and I

This is kind of a long update, but it covers everything I've been promising to tell you about since Christmas. Hope it's interesting, it's certainly been fun for me.


So, last term ended up being slightly busier than I’d planned. The science communication stuff has been going really well, I’ve been writing and editing, I did a bunch of talks and co-organised an unconference called SciBarCamb. Then there was the lab work and review essay as part of the PhD course. Plus, naturally, I had to get some baking in there and the intermediate massage course. Hopefully a bit more breathing space in the last term of the year.

Screening cake based on images from my project.

Full details of last terms project will be up shortly and will also be appearing on the Wellcome Trust blog as the next in my series for them describing my rotations. It’s been a lot of fun and I really enjoyed working with the lab, they are also very responsive to bribery by cake, which was very useful for me. That’s what resulted in screening cake. A set of cakes based on images from the yeast genomic screen we’ve been doing.

Lab 1: Only the Nose Glows (The reality)

I’m back home for Christmas and all done with my first rotation. I’m going to start writing it all up tomorrow, 7000 words in 4 weeks. So it seemed like a good time to write a post about what I’ve actually been doing over the last 9 weeks.

I’ve been trying to find out what makes olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) from neural crest stem cells (NCCs). This means I’ve been looking at which genes are active in these cells at different points in development. The information from an active gene is converted into a messenger molecule (mRNA) and this information is then used to construct a protein, which has a specific role within a cell. mRNA and proteins can be coloured using specific markers.

Lab 1: Only the Nose Knows

Hey

This is the idea that started it all. Telling you all about the different research that I get to do as a PhD student. This post is all about the first lab I'm working in, I started here in early October and have just over a week left until I leave. It's been really a lot of fun, although it did take me a few weeks to really get back into doing work after a very long summer vacation. But the personal stuff can come later. I want to start with the overview. This is the explanation of why I'm doing the project, the stuff I tell people who ask about my work.


(Ed. If anyone's interested, the lab I'm in just released the paper which preceded my project showing that olfactory ensheathing cells are from the neural crest. We also made it into New Scientist.)



Cells from the nose that COULD cure stroke or paralysis! Crazy, right? That’s what I thought too, but it does seem to be true. Cells which guide nerves from the nose into the brain, when transplanted to damaged regions of the spine, help the nerves there to grow through the scar tissue and reconnect with the proper targets.

Small beginnings

Hey! Well, since this is my first post I guess I'd better introduce myself and what I'm trying to do here. For now you can call me Ret, I'm here to give you an inside view of modern biological research. I'm an avid believer in communicating biology to everyone. The point of this blog is to introduce biology to everyone, in a way that is clear and easy to understand. To dispel some of the bad reputation research has gained over the years.

I am a 23 year old, first year PhD student. I am at the University of Cambridge studying animal development; how an adult animal is formed from a fertilised egg. This is a very popular field of study, especially since the advent of stem cell research. I will also be your guide to the "Cambridge bubble" hopefully giving you some idea what it's actually like here on the inside, and showing you some of the things that go on here, besides working. Personally I spend a lot of time dancing and baking.