Being inside out

Modern biotechnology is wonderful. It reveals wonders that we can't see without it. It tells us more about ourselves and about each other, about living things that surround us. Ironically we can see inside our bodies, but still scratch our heads on the outside wondering how we tick inside our brains.

Many years ago, while spending days [1] extracting DNA from large quantities of white blood cells from cows' blood, I added a small tube of my own WBCs. There was room in the centrifuge; why not? The feeling of seeing thin threads of your own DNA floating in solution inside a gently rocking test tube is inexplicable. 

Those fine threads were a history catalog of generations before me, before my mother and father, before them. They were strings of time more ancient that any of us can fathom, carrying the instructions on what makes me human. And how similar yet different I am from each of you. Ironically, even similar to the thick ropes of cow DNA rocking alongside in their own test tubes.

Trypanosoma theirleri and red blood cells

[1] I collaborated with a colleague to develop a sensitive assay (PCR) for detection of microscopic single-celled parasites (Trypanosomes) in the blood of cows. They literally beat up blood (red and white) cells with their 'tails' (flagellum) and weaken the animal's immune system. The process entailed extracting DNA from the fraction of liters of blood containing the WBC; in that fraction were the parasites and their DNA. A close 'cousin' of the same parasite causes Sleeping Sickness in humans.