I knew this would make me tear up! Mostly on your behalf because I know what they have meant to you all these years. That notebook page is legendary. I had the pleasure of working on MSLs with you during the middle years and I miss them, too.
Thank you, honey. (Reader, I married him). I think you had your hands on all of them—MSL1, MSL2/3, MSL8, MSL9/10. Probably tried to clone MSL6, too, I bet.
This one really resonated! I rarely search Pubmed these days, but when I do it's always `pho85`.... I think that a big piece of it for me is all the things that I still didn't know about them, even after several years of study. It's like that nephew you've finally met, but then goes off into the world never to be heard from again. Or a puzzle you put together just one corner of. What other capabilities and jobs do those proteins have that I never learned enough to even guess at, let alone know? You know?
I do know! I like Pubmed as the family reunion where you finally get to see what your nephew has been up to--Peace Corps? Start-up? Joined the Proud Boys?
This reminds me of a course I once taught called "The Role of Imagination in Medicine." The epigraph for the syllabus came from the French scientist Claude Bernard, who some credit as the founder of experimental medicine. In one of his journals he wrote, "Physiology, you are mine." It doesn't get much more personal than having your name on the lab. Those woodcuts are really lovely.
I found this quite moving. You're totally correct that feeling such strong emotion about a gene family feels strange and difficult to explain. But it is understandable that it would be hard for you to leave research undone, leaving some experiments for others to do and accepting that other experiments might not be done in your lifetime, with unknowable second-order effects. I wonder whether you'll try to follow the future literature on plant mechanosensation in the long run, or the extent to which you'll intentionally avoid it. I hope that the sense of loss eventually recedes.
I take it a bit personally when people diss A. thaliana, calling it “a boring weed”, saying that it’s “not a real plant”, and even describing its petite genome as “relatively impoverished”.
I don’t know if I’ll follow the literature either! Right now I do, because I’m curious and love the field.
And I agree about Arabidopsis critics! I used to hear sour jokes about how Petri dishes were its natural habitat. But are monocultured fields the natural habitat of maize? And greenhouses the natural habitat of tobacco?
Beautiful essay, Liz. I was moved by the circular nature of the diagram on the woodcut and what a great metaphor that is for the life of a scientist. Our work doesn't stop with us whether we change institutions, sectors, retire, or die. Discoveries small and large diffuse into the world wide web of the scientific literature, permanently awaiting discovery and citation by a new audience. Our words to mentees in our labs live on past our tenure. We are perpetually going through cycles, forward and backward, ending up where we started and beginning again, but with a head full of previous experiences and fresh eyes towards the future. A form of intellectual reincarnation, if you will. Far from exiting this circle, you are continuing to educate and elucidate, albeit from the outside, with a new perspective.
Thank you, Eric. This is such a healthy way to think about things. A therapist once told me that we revisit the same points again and again in our life, and we just hope to bring something new to them each time--a version of what you wrote so beautifully above.
Oh boy, I can relate to this post! I really miss working with Arabidopsis.
But even more so, I spent several years working on a weird mutant, mapping the gene slowly (SAC9), and characterizing it, without ever fully understanding how all the pieces fit together.
I love the novel analogy. I was thinking about how some fiction writers say they create these characters and then can be surprised and delighted by what they do—they’re characters take on a life of their own. Scientists get to do this all the time!
I knew this would make me tear up! Mostly on your behalf because I know what they have meant to you all these years. That notebook page is legendary. I had the pleasure of working on MSLs with you during the middle years and I miss them, too.
Thank you, honey. (Reader, I married him). I think you had your hands on all of them—MSL1, MSL2/3, MSL8, MSL9/10. Probably tried to clone MSL6, too, I bet.
This one really resonated! I rarely search Pubmed these days, but when I do it's always `pho85`.... I think that a big piece of it for me is all the things that I still didn't know about them, even after several years of study. It's like that nephew you've finally met, but then goes off into the world never to be heard from again. Or a puzzle you put together just one corner of. What other capabilities and jobs do those proteins have that I never learned enough to even guess at, let alone know? You know?
I do know! I like Pubmed as the family reunion where you finally get to see what your nephew has been up to--Peace Corps? Start-up? Joined the Proud Boys?
Hah! Superb examples.
This reminds me of a course I once taught called "The Role of Imagination in Medicine." The epigraph for the syllabus came from the French scientist Claude Bernard, who some credit as the founder of experimental medicine. In one of his journals he wrote, "Physiology, you are mine." It doesn't get much more personal than having your name on the lab. Those woodcuts are really lovely.
That sounds like a class I’d like to take!
I found this quite moving. You're totally correct that feeling such strong emotion about a gene family feels strange and difficult to explain. But it is understandable that it would be hard for you to leave research undone, leaving some experiments for others to do and accepting that other experiments might not be done in your lifetime, with unknowable second-order effects. I wonder whether you'll try to follow the future literature on plant mechanosensation in the long run, or the extent to which you'll intentionally avoid it. I hope that the sense of loss eventually recedes.
I take it a bit personally when people diss A. thaliana, calling it “a boring weed”, saying that it’s “not a real plant”, and even describing its petite genome as “relatively impoverished”.
I don’t know if I’ll follow the literature either! Right now I do, because I’m curious and love the field.
And I agree about Arabidopsis critics! I used to hear sour jokes about how Petri dishes were its natural habitat. But are monocultured fields the natural habitat of maize? And greenhouses the natural habitat of tobacco?
Beautiful essay, Liz. I was moved by the circular nature of the diagram on the woodcut and what a great metaphor that is for the life of a scientist. Our work doesn't stop with us whether we change institutions, sectors, retire, or die. Discoveries small and large diffuse into the world wide web of the scientific literature, permanently awaiting discovery and citation by a new audience. Our words to mentees in our labs live on past our tenure. We are perpetually going through cycles, forward and backward, ending up where we started and beginning again, but with a head full of previous experiences and fresh eyes towards the future. A form of intellectual reincarnation, if you will. Far from exiting this circle, you are continuing to educate and elucidate, albeit from the outside, with a new perspective.
Thank you, Eric. This is such a healthy way to think about things. A therapist once told me that we revisit the same points again and again in our life, and we just hope to bring something new to them each time--a version of what you wrote so beautifully above.
Oh boy, I can relate to this post! I really miss working with Arabidopsis.
But even more so, I spent several years working on a weird mutant, mapping the gene slowly (SAC9), and characterizing it, without ever fully understanding how all the pieces fit together.
Fortunately the group of Marie-Cécile Caillaud picked it up and they've now published two papers on it https://elifesciences.org/articles/73837 and https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.adf7532. It's like finding out that a sequel has been published to a beloved novel.
I love the novel analogy. I was thinking about how some fiction writers say they create these characters and then can be surprised and delighted by what they do—they’re characters take on a life of their own. Scientists get to do this all the time!