Something to Write Blog About!

       I am visiting by blog after a long time. I wanted to write something to distract myself. But the sad part is that nothing is coming to my mind. Well, I have been writing for last so many months. Mostly academic stuff.... manuscript, letters, fellowship applications.....But not good materials for a blog.      
       Why not? I mean, why can't academic stuff be interesting? That is an interesting subject by itself. A while ago I was listening to a commencement speech by Robert Krulwich. He was talking about the importance of communication in science. Communicate your 'Big idea' to people from outside your field. It is a  talent - to present your research to someone who has no idea on topic you are working on. Carl Sagan is my hero in this area, because of his knack for telling a story, to breakdown complex concept to easily understandable pieces to anyone listening to it. It can be a very handy ability. So, why don't I try to explain what I am working on.
       Here it is... Do you know what you are? You are nothing but a composite of billions of small units called cells. There are different varieties of them. The cells on your skin are different from cells in your eyes which is different from your cells in heart, which is different from your cells in liver.. so on an so forth.. One important component for the normal working of cells are proteins. You must be very familiar with that name.. in this health freaky world, hardly a day goes by when you don't hear about proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Well its the same dude I am talking about. Do you know what do they do? They do zillions of things in the body or in your cells, they are needed to see, breath, eat and pretty much every thing you do. On a rough estimate we humans have around 20,000 different types of proteins. I study one of this ~ 20,000 proteins. We call it COBRA1, pretty cool name, right? One among 20,000? whats the big deal? This is the big deal: if we dont have this little protein we will die! How do I know for sure? We have techniques to get rid of this protein from small animals like mice. When we removed this protein from mice, they could not live.Surprisingly, we humans and mice are very similar at smaller scale , for the most part. Therefore, by extrapolation, I assume we also would have same fate if were to get rid of COBRA1 from our body. So they are pretty important. We also found that the amount of this protein is low in breast cancer. What does that mean? Does it mean in some people breast cancer develop because some how COBRA1 is produced less? Does it mean if we have more COBRA1 it will protect us from cancer? These are some of the questions I am trying to find answer for. I will stop here. I am sure that I am not successful in making it really straight forward or clear. Well, it was my first attempt, on the fly!
      Everyday is a new day! New experiences,  new thoughts, new people, new stories. There will something to write (blog) about. Let me try. Wish me good luck.