PEREGRINATIONS

I still remember the skin on my grandmother’s arms. It had that crumpled-silk feeling that I used to love running my cheeks over. I did not know then that it was called sarcopenia or muscle wasting, often seen in the very elderly or children with progeria, as was Auro in the film Paa. Muscle is what gives us our youthful limbs, the full cheeks and the expressive faces. Making up nearly 30% of our body mass, skeletal muscle or voluntary muscle enables us to walk, run, lift, blink, smile and breathe. Among the largest cells in the body, skeletal muscle cells connect to the bones through tendons. Each muscle is a bundle of muscle cells stretched from tendon to tendon, contracting in sync. Each muscle cell is packed with micro-bundles of proteins known as actin and myosin that slide against each other like in the boom of a telescopic crane. This sliding results in the contraction or expansion of the muscle, forcing the leg to bend, the lips to curve or the chest to expand. I...

So, the resolution to write more frequently did not really materialize. There are too many other less interesting distractions. But it’s a good time to glance back before forging ahead.   I started with no thought of money (or rather funds, as scientists seem to call it), generously helped by supportive colleagues. Then joined the mainstream, wrote network projects (as the funding agency calls them) and now it was funds galore. Oh, but like Cinderella there was a deadline…when the clock strikes midnight the carriage will turn to a pumpkin and the funds will all vanish. So dutifully, we stuffed our freezers and emptied our pockets. Then you are told, go play with your existing toys, no new toys for you for six months. The fairy godmother visits but rarely. So, until then we shall do predictable research, and dream of all those ‘urgent’ experiments. I started with one student who had accidentally strayed into my web. Now I have a team of 10 assorted students. I started with ...

Adult body is a specialized machine with each part perfected for its intended function. Most cells in the adult body are irreversibly differentiated to form parts of this machine. Such as the heart, where the myocardial cells form an interconnected bundle that can contract in unison upon receiving instructions from the cardiac pacemaker. Or the brain, which contains millions of neurons connected through synapses designed for this command centre to integrate and control all the activities of the organism from digestion to perspiration to locomotion to reproduction to introspection. The life of every animal starts off from a single cell known as the zygote. This single cell divides prolifically to give rise to the embryo, where progressively cells exit cell cycle, specialize for a particular function and differentiate. However, there are organs in the body that undergo regular wear and tear and require continuous repair and replacement of lost cells. Examples include the...

Only as far as we imagine… On a clear night 20,000 years ago a man lay next to the warming fire and gazed upward; he saw a glittering dome that contained the world he lived in. Today when I lounge on my balcony and stare up at a smog-obscured-night-sky, I see an infinite universe, perhaps one of many; a vast nothingness punctuated by millions of insignificant balls of fire with finite life spans, around one of which we spend our precariously short existence. Over the last many thousands of years, we have shattered that domed-roof over our heads and thrown back its limits into the reaches of infinity. And all because we dared to imagine, imagine an infinity, imagine a time even before time. However, our world is only as big as we can imagine. Our discoveries will remain contained within the boundaries of our imagination. If we cannot imagine it, we shall not discover it. The 17 th century philosopher Benedictus Spinoza once said ‘ if a triangle could speak, it would say, in...