By Golda Gross, Sheba Medical Center, Israel
There’s a running joke in my family: when people ask me what I do, a family member answers on my behalf that I’m a physiotherapist. It’s a joke because, well, I’m not a physiotherapist. At all. I’m not and have never wanted to be a doctor; I’m a researcher, and my work has nothing to with muscles.
So how did the joke start? During my BSc in Physiology, I tried to explain what I was learning about, with limited success. I might as well have been describing a pancake recipe in Greek. So they jokingly settled on the nearest word that was familiar to them: physiotherapy.
The topic of my third-year research project was characterizing the bioenergetic profile of hybrid cells. They had the nucleus of HeLa cells and the mitochondria of MELAS patients (mitochondrial encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes syndrome), a rare systemic tissue dysfunction stemming from a mutation in mitochondrial DNA.
Even though this topic was mostly basic research, I was satisfied because it taught me the ropes of metabolic physiology, from analysing respirometry data, to learning which drugs were useful in modulating the mitochondrial electron transport chain, to mastering more universal lab skills like cell culture and statistical testing. All of this contributed to building my confidence as a scientist. I would come out of the lab feeling tired, but, more importantly, accomplished.
But explaining all of this to a non-scientist audience was a whole other matter. If I wanted people to understand the topic of my project, I would have to start with a brief explanation of what mitochondria are – apparently not everyone remembers from high school biology that they are the powerhouse of the cell – and surprise them with the fact that mitochondria had their own DNA. By that point, most people were already looking at me blankly, with a smile on their face, genuinely happy that I was enjoying my science but confused about my enthusiasm and certainly unable to share it. It seemed like each biology word that I was throwing at them – mitochondria, DNA, nucleus – was one more spoonful of a bitter medicine, which they swallowed reluctantly.
And so, by the middle of my third year, I had essentially given up on trying to explain in detail what I was working on. I settled on a brief rebuttal of the physiotherapist joke – I was doing research in human biology. If the person asking was exceptionally curious, I would add that my research focused on cellular energy production. Every time, I was puzzled at how difficult it was to convey my curiosity, even to people who usually relished the idea of an intellectual challenge.
This year, I started my Master’s research project in a hospital research lab. The focus is still on metabolic physiology and mitochondrial function, so the experiments and apparatus are similar to what I was using last year, but the cell type is different. Now I work with CAR T-cells, which are T-cells that have been extracted, in my case, from cancer patients. We introduce a gene for a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) into their genome, which is an artificially designed receptor that binds to cancer cells. This allows T-cells to work their magic and defeat cancer using the patient’s modified but endogenous immune system.
So from one year to the next, the setting of my research has changed dramatically: I went from a university lab, working on a cell line that was in itself an experiment in biological systems engineering, to a hospital lab, handling patient samples to ultimately enhance cancer therapies and allow patients, whose hospital wing I can see from my lab window, to recover. Obviously, this is a romanticized version of a large-scale effort, one that doesn’t really describe the day-to-day of my life as a postgraduate student. But my previous project did not allow any romance.
When I started my new research, I realised how differently people reacted to my attempts to explain it. It turns out that “cancer” is a buzzword that most people will react to with interest, because they understand the need for cancer therapies. That includes those who had previously stared at me with fear in their eyes when I spoke about my mitochondrial mutations.
Understanding the purpose of my work, my hopes and intentions, is the key to their attention: they now happily withstand the twenty minutes’ worth of background explanations about the immune system and genetic engineering that are necessary to assemble the puzzle of my research. I’m amazed at how willingly people now engage in the conversation, regardless of their initial knowledge and interest in biology, just because the mystery of why has been lifted. A valuable lesson in communications for a budding scientist.
Please note that all views expressed on The Physiological Society’s blog reflect those of the author(s) and not of The Society.