Benches shook. Monitors clattered off uneven tables. Reagents jangled and tumbled, spilling down the giant’s mile long limb. The scientists, so enthralled in their thoughts and experiments, had forgotten how high up they really were! They buzzed around the ivory towers encrusted like pale honeycomb along the giant’s monstrous shoulders.
Where is Uncle Sam going now… one scientist wondered, looking over the foggy mountain range. Villagers stirred like ants as the giant lumbered closer. Some admonished the giant, some welcomed the intrusion. Others went along with their day.
Memorizing the periodic table of elements is undeniably one of the (slightly dreadful) science class rites of passage. Although most of us weren’t expected to memorize the entire table, we had to learn enough of it to recognize what a few of the symbols meant. Growing up during the golden era of YouTube, I came to associate learning the elements with the iconic “The New Periodic Table Song” by AsapSCIENCE. The song consists of a rapid-fire list of the chemical elements in order, sung in an absurdly catchy melody. It is chaotic, distinctively nerdy, and unforgettable even a decade later.
This piece is of a family at an art museum looking up at an exhibit titled “on the shoulders of giants” featuring portraits of influential people within the field of STEM. To me, this is a visualization of how the people today look upon giants of the past resulting in a never-ending cycle of inspiration and influence for future generations who are still unaware of the impact they will have. Together, this shows the cycle of influence that the giants of the past have on us in the present, as well as those of our future.
Charukesi Sivakumar is a 5th year PhD Student in the Molecular and Cellular Pathology Program. She is in the Rajesh Rao Lab, studying the mechanisms of early eye development. She hopes to pursue a career where she can find new and creative ways to bridge the gap between patients and scientists. Outside of the lab, you can find her playing the violin with the U of M Life Sciences Orchestra, reading, singing, cooking, listening to music and podcasts, doing art, or spending time outdoors.
The first neuroscientists were artists. Using clever chemistry, they developed ways to stain brain tissue and then drew what they saw. Here, I have carved a block print based on one of the first published drawings of microglia, the immune cells of the brain. In a series of four 1919 papers, Pío del Río-Hortega described these cells and clearly showed that they were a different cell type from the other glial cells in the brain, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. His conclusions about microglia, based almost solely on observations about how they look under different conditions, were startlingly accurate. For example, he noticed that microglia rapidly migrate to a site of injury and transform in shape, even becoming, in his words, “monstrous.” He accurately hypothesized that they clean up debris through a process called phagocytosis. He also speculated that microglia have a different developmental origin than other brain cell types, a conclusion that wouldn’t be verified for over 100 years and which required the development of sophisticated genetic fate mapping techniques.
The first question I ever thought to ask of the Universe was not how it came into being, not when it decided to be, nor even why it wanted to become. No, my questions were concerned with my own how, when, and why: ‘How did it come to be that I existed only in the liminal spaces?’ ‘Why was I relegated to them?’ and ‘When, if ever, could I escape into permanence and stability?’ In other words, my original motivations for studying the Universe were selfish. It seemed to me the source from which I could draw meaningful truths about my existence uncorrupted by mankind’s falsehoods it tried to project onto me.
Hira is a neuroscience graduate student researching how memories get stabilized during sleep. She is passionate about communicating science to the broader public and making STEM pathways more accessible to all.
Anjesh is a neuroscience graduate student researching whether the memory processes the brain uses to learn and store memories also play a role in forming strong social bonds. He loves his work, his friends and family, skiing, and he is perpetually struggling to keep his plants alive.
Five hundred years before the Renaissance, a Muslim polymath shattered the paradigm of optics while practicing elements of what we now call the scientific method. In 1021, Ibn al-Haytham, Latinized as Alhazen, completed his magnum opus, the Book of Optics, a seven-volume treatise with a revolutionary claim: vision occurs because light falls into the eye, not out of it.
Ancient hands pulled strings taut on bows beneath the young sun. Calloused hands spread tar across rooftops under summer heat. Tanned hands scrubbed grime from grout beneath crystal chandeliers. Now, gloved hands pipette beneath fluorescent laboratory lights.
Humanity has come a long way since Lucy, one of our earliest known human ancestors. Lucy, like many of our ancestors, had to put survival and instinct first; there was room for nothing else. Every hour was spent hunting, gathering, building, and enduring. Survival was not a choice. Before humanity could advance, our ancestors first had to withstand the brutality of the world around them.
Written by: Alexander Ford, Jessica Li, and Julia Kravchenko
To those outside of science – our progress appears in bursts. Nothing nothing nothing, and suddenly you can take penicillin for your pneumonia. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and now the first internal combustion engine lets you travel farther and faster. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and then they’ve suddenly split the atom.
Yet “nothing” is never truly nothing. Each of these discoveries is an amalgam of countless smaller discoveries, countless stories, countless journeys, and countless scientists tenaciously repeating the cycle of the scientific method. Science is the means by which we humans expand our knowledge of cause and effect in the physical world. It is the process by which we create wonders and terrors, save lives and destroy them. It is – fundamentally – a framework that we never stop building upon, the path our species has travelled along to get us to today, and the path that spirals out ever outwards into the future.
The title of this 5th anniversary edition is drawn from the famous quote by Isaac Newton in a 1675 letter, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”, a metaphor for the great discoveries he himself had come to, from calculus to gravity, and how even these accomplishments are derived from a lineage of work stretching back thousands of years to the ancient mathematicians. It emphasizes humility, and acknowledgement of that long lineage of scientific advancement under the surface of every discovery.
It’s fitting that this quote itself stands upon literary shouldersgoes back even further – originating in the 12th century with the French philosopher Bernard of Chartres who wrote:
“We are like dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance—not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical height, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant stature.”
Within this edition, we cover some scientific discoveries that have helped us see farther than ever before. and take time to explore our connections to our scientific giants, and how much we build on their legacies when we create our own. John Donne perhaps said it best, “No man is an island, Entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main” – and the institution of scientific discovery is no different in the reciprocal connections to the lives of nearly every human being and every discovery.
As we look ahead to the future, we must also look down – and remember that we all – in our own ways – stand on giants of our own.
Alex Ford is a student and neuroscientist who researches how the brain processes sensory information in the visual system. He has a tendency to seek out the absurd, and frequently attempts to create art. In his free time, he is with friends, family, or a good book under a tree.
Jess Li is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology. Though their research interests have evolved toward an environmental microbiology focus, they remain fascinated by the gut microbiome and the many ways microbes affect human health. They aim to make science more engaging through fun illustrations.
Julia Kravchenko is a neuroscience graduate student studying the relationship between sleep and Alzheimer’s disease. She is passionate about making academia accessible to the general public. Outside the lab she can be found reading fantasy novels amidst her growing collection of gnomes.
Written by Kayla Moehn Edited by Deanna Canizzaro and Amanda Bekkala Illustrated by Danny Cruz
Growing up, I loved visiting local restaurants with my family, and these shared meals were usually quite eventful.
In New Mexico, the start of most meals is marked by the waitress placing a basket of freshly baked tortilla chips and red serving dishes filled with salsa on the table. It’s understood that the salsa is for adults because it can be very spicy. However, that doesn’t always deter kids from wanting to be like the grown-ups, and I was no different.
As a child, I remember bravely taking a chip and submerging it in salsa before my parents could move it away.
“Oh no! Be careful, KK. That is very hot and for grown-ups only,” my mother warned.
I wanted to be like my parents, though. I may have only been five, but I wanted them to know that I was not a baby. Against my mom’s advice, I shoved the salsa-soaked chip in my mouth. Tears streamed down my face as an intense burning pain filled my mouth. “Ouch! Mommy, this hurts,” I sobbed. I didn’t understand why she and my dad could enjoy something that caused such discomfort in my mouth.
My parents both chuckled while my dad handed me the bottle of honey on the table. Quickly, I squeezed a dollop of honey onto a new tortilla chip and shoved it into my mouth. I kept shoveling honey-coated chips into my mouth until the sweetness of the honey overpowered the unpleasant spiciness of the salsa. Finally, my mouth felt normal again, and a smile found its way to my face as I savored a New Mexican staple for children who are deemed unready for spice.
Eventually, the waitress returned to our table to take our orders. “Red or green?” she inquired. Every New Mexican understands the meaning of this question. She wanted to know if I wanted red or green chile smothered over my meal, a New Mexican tradition.
“She will have neither,” my mother chuckled.
As a child and then adolescent who struggled with eating like a “New Mexican”,I wondered why chile induced such profound pain in my lips and tongue while sparing others. Were others just pretending to like it?
This question continued to simmer in my mind until college, where I majored in genetics at New Mexico State University – home to the Chile Pepper Institute (CPI). The CPI is an international leader in the science of spicy foods. During a class field trip to the CPI’s teaching garden, I first started to uncover some of the answers to my burning questions.
There, surrounded by rows of colorful, sun-soaked peppers, I discovered how scientists carefully breed chiles to craft unique flavors and heat profiles. The diversity of chile was evident in the 150 varieties throughout the garden that varied in size, color, and flavor. Some peppers had small purple fruits packed with high levels of spicy capsaicin – the chemical responsible for inducing the burning sensation that haunted me at family dinners – while others had larger and sweeter fruits with no traces of capsaicin.1 The most commonly grown chile varieties in New Mexico belong to the Capsicumannuum species, which includes New Mexico chile pepper varieties, along with paprika, jalapenos, and cayennes.2 These varieties contribute to the trademark smokey, spicy, and sweet flavor of New Mexican cuisine and differentiate it from the spicy cuisine of other cultures.
My field trip to the CPI teaching garden left me with much to contemplate. Chile peppers were more than just the red and green spicy nuisances of my childhood dinners – they were carefully cultivated and culturally sacred.
Still, knowledge of the wondrous diversity of chile peppers didn’t erase the sting.
One morning in college, I remember sitting outside with my friends at a restaurant under the sunny New Mexican skies. A basket of chips and a variety of green and red salsas sat on the table. To an outsider, this looked like the perfect day, however, I was feeling a little nervous.
My friends quickly started to snack on salsa-covered chips. Before I knew it, everyone was sharing their opinions on the four different salsas that sat on our table. I grew increasingly anxious that everyone was about to discover my sensitivity to spice. In that moment, I was transported back to being the five-year-old who wanted nothing more than to fit in with the others around the table.
“Kayla, you’ve been awfully quiet…which salsa is your favorite?”
My heart was racing. I desperately wanted my friends to think that I could handle the heat. I grabbed a chip and dipped it in the green salsa. “I think I like this one,” I said shakily as I shoved the chip in my mouth. Almost instantaneously, an alarm sounded in my mouth as the tiny capsaicin molecules in the jalapenos dispersed onto my tongue.
Against my better judgment, I grabbed a cold glass of water and tried to feign nonchalance. This only made the pain more intense as capsaicin – which does not dissolve well in water – spread more widely around my mouth.3 Sensory neurons throughout my mouth began to fire nonstop, inducing this uncomfortable sensation.
Unlike neurons in the brain, sensory neurons are packed with special detectors that enable them to sense hot/cold, chemical compounds like capsaicin, and touch.4 Surprisingly, the identity of the capsaicin-detecting receptor remained a mystery to scientists for a long time. It was not until 1997 that Dr. David Julius and his research team discovered the molecular blueprint and structure of the detector and later named it TRPV1 (pronounced trip-VEE-wuhn).5,6 Since its discovery, researchers have found that TRPV1 can detect more than just capsaicin, including hot temperatures and acidic pH.7,8
When capsaicin binds to TRPV1, the detector changes shape, similar to a key (capsaicin) unlocking the door (TRPV1) to your home (neuron). Instead of letting people through, TRPV1 opens to allow positively charged ions like calcium and sodium to rush into the neuron. This influx of positive charge causes the neuron to send an electrical signal to the brain that is interpreted as a painful, burning sensation.9
As a college student, I was unaware of the details of this molecular dance, and frankly, all I was concerned with was fitting in with my friends. Throughout the meal, I did my best to hide my pain, as I continued to cautiously eat just enough salsa-coated chips to deter any suspicion that I was an impostor.
Towards the end of my meal, I noticed something strange.
As I continued to eat more salsa, the alarm bells in my mouth lessened. I still felt uncomfortable, but the bite of the salsa stung less. Slowly, I started to notice the earthy and somewhat citrusy flavors of the jalapenos and tomatillos in the salsa. Is this why my family and friends enjoyed eating spicy foods?
It was not magic that made the burning sensation slowly fade. This phenomenon – called neuronal desensitization – occurs when sensory neurons that express TRPV1 become less responsive to capsaicin after repeated exposure.10 This is similar to when you enter a cold pool. At first, you might feel a lot of discomfort, but eventually your body becomes accustomed to the temperature and your cold-sensing neurons stop firing.
It remains an open question about how desensitization to capsaicin occurs, but scientists have some ideas.6,9 One hunch is that continued capsaicin detection and neuronal firing are taxing on the neuron and deplete its resources. As a consequence, the neuron may either become less responsive to replenish its supplies or die.
As I left the meal with my friends, I felt newly empowered to take on the spicy world of New Mexican food. With each spicy encounter, the sensory neurons in my mouth that detect capsaicin began to change. They gradually became less sensitive to the heat, allowing the complex and rich flavors of New Mexican food to shine through more clearly. Increasingly open to trying spicy foods, I left college not only with a tolerance for spice but also a larger appreciation for my culture’s cuisine.
Motivated to learn more about sensory neuroscience, I moved to Michigan to pursue my PhD and serendipitously joined the lab of Dr. Joshua Emrick, who trained under the mentorship of Dr. Julius, the scientist who uncovered the identity of TRPV1 (and later won a Nobel Prize for the discovery). My passion for understanding sensory receptors and neuroscience as a whole has allowed me to explore a new perspective of New Mexican cuisine, even far from home.
Here, I often find myself with new friends from the Midwest who have yet to be accustomed to spice. As we enjoy a meal together, they eye a bowl of salsa with suspicion. I dip a chip generously, smile, and say, “This isn’t spicy at all!” A glimmer of courage flashes in their eyes as they take a chip and give it a try. They try to hide their wince.
“It gets better. I promise.”
Kayla is a neuroscience PhD student on a quest to understand how the nervous system lets us sense the world. In the lab, she develops novel ways to study tooth and other orofacial pain in rodents. Outside of science, she enjoys golfing, watching Breaking Bad, and spending time with her boyfriend and two adorable cats, Dewey and Peanut Shell.
