Genetics Gets More Complicated
Jeff Darcy November 3, 2009 21:17
This story about microRNA is not only highly significant, but it’s also a wonderful tale of persistence and collaboration and everything that’s good about the scientific community. On top of that, it’s well told by the author, so I had to share.
Ambros’s work on that bizarre mutant provided one of the first signs that RNA might be much more important than anyone had suspected, but not until 2001 did the full story start to unfold. That is when studies finally convinced scientists that the minuscule RNA snippets they had taken to calling “microRNA” were regulating cellular and genetic processes throughout the human body and were critical factors in the determination of health and disease.
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Another explanation is that, as with any remarkable scientific discovery, finding microRNA required just the right combination of talent, circumstance, and luck. Ambros found a perfect collaborator in his wife, Candy Lee, who was a lab technician. As Baltimore describes them (having worked with both), they follow the data rather than the scientific fashions; they are both technically adept in the laboratory; and “they have never been ambitious to the point of its getting in the way of reality.” This is not to say that they lack the drive to do good science, but that “they’re not worrying about the trappings of science,” Baltimore says.
They even recruit one of their kids to do some computer programming for the project at one point. How cool is that?
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