Coolproteomics.com|It’s all about proteins, isn’t it?

Another 9-11 anniversary gone by. A pretty awful day for so many. The world changed that day, but in some ways, it didn’t.

The human appetite for war and killing is still so strong with no end in sight. Countries are always ready to avenge an attack, fight an enemy, march on another country. Government budgets for military research are enormous; the US defense budget is almost equal to all other countries combined.

There are some nasty people out there, especially religious extremists who use their god as their shield to kill. Or dictators hiding behind religion to push down their citizens. Except for our weapons, where we have really excelled, when it comes to people killing people, the human race has not progressed much from where it was thousands of years ago.

But when we look at what the real terrorists are doing to everyone on the planet, we show little of the same flaming passion to avenge our sick, our injured, our dead. Deaths from cardiovascular disease dwarf the world’s war dead. Cancer is a random genocide. Tuberculosis a well armed military destroying everything in its path.

The real terrorists? They are attacking our cells everyday, inserting explosive viral packages for future destruction and sheer terror. They force people to have diagnostic tests whose results could be devastating. They are mutated DNA coding for a protein that inhibits productivity, increases depression and wrecks lives. And these terrorists effect millions of lives every day.

The statistics are startling, aren’t they? It’s clear Americans — indeed the world — are attacked by disease so often that it should arguably be the biggest topic for electoral politics. But it isn’t. In fact, it is rarely mentioned. Global warming gets more airtime.

So where is the outrage? Why aren’t Democrats and Republicans duking it out over how to conquer cancer, attack AIDS, terminate tuberculosis and destroy diabetes? Where is the debate on educating more kids to encourage them to enter scientific fields to bolster our national intellectual property and hence, innovations and prosperity? Regardless of what one may think of the efficacy of government scientific research institutions such as the NIH, why aren’t we increasing its funding to understand the fundamental causes of disease?

The real terror isn’t a women with a burka in a crowded farmer’s market, or a man with a turban sitting next to you on a plane, but a woman feeling a lump on her breast for the first time, or a man being told by his doctor about a high PSA test, or a chicken farmer in Thailand feeling sick. The terror alert should be red for a pregnant woman with no way to afford pre-natal care, or an aging veteran without medical coverage.

So why aren’t more people demonstrating in the streets against these invaders; these harbingers of death? Why haven’t we lobbied for a surge for cancer? A national disease-defense program? A department of health security?

It’s because we are not wired that way, I believe. There are war heroes, but no scientific heroes. Our history books teach how the battle of Gettysburg was fought, but little on the battle on cancer. We have parades for victorious troops, but not victorious mass spectroscopists. That’s just a guess.

Lest you think I am some crazy guy who hates war and wants every disease on the planet cured… wait! I am. Yep.

So fight on science! Maybe one day the brain will rule the brawn as the main way to delegate resources… until then, write a grant and hope for the best.

Have you ever spent time in a crowded city on a busy street corner just watching? Watching people?

Close your eyes and see it in your mind. You’re at the corner of Fifth and Park Avenues in New York City… it’s the summer and it just rained. You have to meet someone for dinner so you call to get directions and exchange information. On the way out of the office you smoke a joint, buy flowers from a vendor, bump into someone who quietly pick-pockets your wallet while you give some money to a street artist… and you continue to watch the people around you. Some of them are more attractive then others, you think to yourself, and then one comes along and you hug tightly… you can feel the chemistry.

Now, think about a cell… go deep inside and make yourself tiny. Really tiny. Can you see the different macromolecules floating around, some hurrying to get somewhere… some hanging with the wrong crowd, free radicals, roaming proteases, foreign small molecules, substrates. And then a few bump into each other and hang out for a while, while others avoid each other with a vengeance. You watch as one decent sized multivalent protein leans against the cell membrane and rings the doorbell. A giant vacuole pops open and with its lipid lips swallows it whole. Shock is in the air. Most of the proteins seem to know where they’re going, but some just hang around like they’re waiting for a bus.

They are born, one amino acid at a time. They fold, unfold, perform a function and then die… chopped up by another protein like a mortician preparing a body.

And life goes on.

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