Skip to main content

Data!

By

Having a large amount of data in your hands sounds like a great end to a project in the beginning. By the end, you realize that it was really only a beginning and not such a great one at that. It is like you went to a yard sale and brought all this junk for free. At that time it sounded like a great idea. Now you have no idea what to do with it.

As you begin your analysis you start getting these ‘very significant’ changes, large sets of genes are heaving up into a wave and falling back down, or dipping down into the abyss and then pulling themselves up in a joint effort! Wow! There you stand like Columbus, at the helm of Santa Maria, about to discover the new land, full of possibilities, new stories, new animals, new riches. And then suddenly there emerges from the forest a man, then another and then another with that ‘been-here-done-it’ look. They have found, killed the animals, domesticated the plants, built their huts and tamed the rivers. And you gingerly step into the land and try to edge your way between them into the thick forest knowing you are just another traveller, just another of those wandering species that goes about disrupting the homeostasis. As you cut away the heavy loaded branches blocking your path and push the undergrowth out of the way and scare the small animals off as you take each step, you are hoping that there is something left in this forest, something for you to find, discover, for the first time and hold it aloft like the Statue of Liberty and shout or rather mutter hesitantly that here, I have found a plant, looks a bit like the ivy, is just less poisonous, something like the bird of paradise, just a little less flamboyant, but here it is!

Photo by Francesco Ungaro from Pexels

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Obstacle Course to Being

By Chetana Sachidanandan
Today, I got news that a close friend is in the early days of what might be a difficult pregnancy. Richard Dawkins’ opening remarks of his book “Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder” came to mind. He marvels at how statistic-numbingly lucky each one of us is to have survived the odds of a sperm and a ovum fusing and giving rise to a living cell. How we are a nanoscopically small number of the total combinations that are possible for the human genome. But as a developmental biologist, for me, this is just the starting point of the great obstacle course. The hurdles that the embryo will clear in the mother’s womb to make it to light and sunshine, warmth and fragrance, and the colours and music of this, our second home.  We see numerous reminders of each step that falters, in the birth defects that abound our world (according to statistics, 3-6% of infants born). A less than perfect infant brings anguish for the mother and potential disa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Autism: Accepting our differences

By
April is Autism Awareness Month Priyam was the life of the party at the day care centre. A bright-eyed boy who captured the heart of the caretakers and played with abandon. Sometime after his second birthday, all this started changing. He stopped playing with his toys, he seemed more interested in organizing them now. He stopped talking, not even responding even when called by name. He stopped smiling at people and making eye contact. Then the rhythmic movements started; rocking his body, banging his head or repeatedly tapping on the table. One day he banged his head so much that when his father came hurriedly summoned by the caretaker, there was a trickle of blood running down his face. That was his last day at the centre; they refused to keep him after that.  Nancy was different. Growing up in a family with siblings and grandparents, she was used to people. But outsiders were studiously ignored. She heard all the questions and comments, but never acknowledged them. Loud noises, r...
Post a Comment
Read more

Real or Imagined?

By
Real or Imagined? Right now I have a time-lapse experiment in progress at home. An infant beginning to appreciate that a person disappearing behind the curtain is not gone, just hidden; now a toddler who enlists me in pretend-play.  The neuronal circuits necessary for imagination are busy being built. The history of western art charts an analogous course for human civilization. Early examples of art relied heavily on ‘true-to-type’ representation of reality. From ancient Greece to Rome to Renaissance, art was all about how well you could recreate in stone or canvas what you see, as you see it. Parisians graduated to Impressionism when one day in 1874, Claude Monet’s ‘Impression, Sunrise’ (Impression, soleil levant) was unveiled. A few seemingly random strokes of paint on canvas, enough for us to visualize the luminescent descent of the sun into the sea, was equated to an unfinished wallpaper by the art connoisseurs of 19th century. How is it that a few daubs of pain...
Post a Comment
Read more