Dr. Steven Griffiths Monthly Column, published in the Times & Transcript

Monster Machines

Tuesday January 20, 2009

Before my son could walk, he was enchanted by wheels.

It turned out that this wasn’t something mysterious or unique. The magic of wheels is a cross cultural phenomenon, common among children probably since the first rock rolled down a hill and knocked over a prehistoric chicken.

Something about the motion of the wheel, the cycle, and the symmetry: it is so innately attractive to developing human software that the hook can be immediate. As we age we appreciate the convergence and connectivity of wheels to seasonal growth and renewal; the dark symbolism of the snake eating its own tail. But first of all, it is usually an adrenalin kick: the neurochemical text message of “OMG! COOLl”! . Nerves have been tickled and repeat stimuli are sought.

David and I were lucky. Right across from my work at the time was a place called Lounsbury’s. It sold and rented those mechanical goliaths that chewed up forests to produce what you’re reading now. Some of these beauties automatically identified, measured, cut, debranched and trimmed trees into equal lengths. In seconds. Equally impressive were the humongous yellow earth movers with buckets big enough to take a class of grade schoolers or an NB Power executive on a hay ride. Germane to wheels, all of these tasks were done on gargantuan rubber doughnuts.

I was reminded of all of this the other day while transferring old video recorder tapes to digital. 10 years later there he is again, bubbling with “ooos!” and “aahs!” ; rushing about in a padded romper suit from one green and yellow giant to the next. It was clear that David also enjoyed himself but generally exercised rather more restraint.

160 lb slighter than he is now, back at home my son would curl into my chest with blanky and we watched well worn tapes of Discovery Channel’s “Monster Machines” . We could recite the specs of earth moving dinosaurs with names like “The Silver Spade” : a bit of an incongruous label that one, considering that the thing was twice as tall as the Georges Dumont Hospital, a sprightly 14 million pounds and took 160 tons of landscape with each nibble. The bigger the jobs, the more challenging the resources, the bigger the toys.

In cancer research we also have some big jobs to do and the toys to match. We also have lots of stuff to move. Our giant mover is called a mass spectrometer. Instead of giant piles of earth and sand though, we have proteins; think of a single grain of sand in the bucket of a monster earth mover as a protein and you might grasp the scale.

We don’t just pick the pile of proteins up and push them aside though. Our monsters sift the grains of life and sort them out by size and electrical charge. We detect the difference in the “normal” pile and the “different” pile or, more specifically the differences in a normal blood sample and that of a patient.. Perhaps our toys are more like monster gold prospectors rather than monster earth movers (thanks Ian). They are sensitive enough to detect the differences between a grain of the real stuff and iron pyrite (fools gold) mixed in among grains common to both sources.

In real estate the old maxim is that there are three important things: location, location, location. We have a similar one: context, context, context. We identify patterns of protein grains and how they differ among groups of patients. For example which patterns might identify a patient that will respond well to a certain treatment? How quickly might the treatment be needed? Are there patterns that tell us whether treatment has been successful or whether alternatives are needed? Our monster machines tell us what grains might be present in suspicious amounts and what might be missing compared to normal state of affairs. This is the science of proteomics

We are lucky enough to have these splendid resources thanks to the foresight of our boss Dr Rodney Ouellette and the passion and commitment of our supporters. The desirability to get such monster machines working here in New Brunswick was in fact how the boss and I met (see Science of Life 1). Big and complicated toys need dexterous magicians and mechanics of some sophistication: dedicated and enthusiastic teams that can and want to get it done. We have David Barnett, in my opinion the best Mass Spec wrangler in the world, who continues to push them to greater capability with his own innovations (type “FAIMS” into YouTube to see what Dave invented and get an idea about mass spectrometry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CjA1gn450E). We have the sorting and arranging wizardry of Daniel Leger. Daniel can categorise and collate this information like those magical piggy banks that divide a sock full of change into rows of pennies, dimes and quarters. We need committed, technical specialists that understand the biology and responsibility and have the skills to match. In this instance we are fortunate that such activities are coordinated and executed by Laboratory Manager and primo switch hitter Ian Chute. Our good fortune includes the intelligence, swift prescience and possible telepathy of Amanda Ferguson. I am very lucky to be working along side these great people.

Thanks to your generous and continuing support we have a lot of work to do. I hope to update you occasionally on our digs in these columns. I’ll close now that I’ve seen an analogy to another Discovery Channel favourite: Archeology. I’ll leave you to spin out some metaphors on that one as I’ve run out of space. Now if you’ll excuse us, it’s time to put our hard hats on.

Stay Frosty

Article as published:
http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/news/article/545422

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(Published in Times & Transcript)