Answering "The God Question"

In this case, The God Question has nothing to do with whether or not God exists or what He's like. It's a question that has been posed by my boss and others in the scientific world, and goes something like this: Suppose you are wondering what the answer is to some question. Now suppose that God comes down and tells you the answer so that you don't have to spend any time or money figuring it out. Now you've got the answer. So what?

That "So what?" is The God Question. And I've been trying to come up with an answer to that question with regard to the study of certain populations of cells in the vocal folds. As I wrote in my last entry, the interaction between epithelial and mesenchymal cells in the regulation of fibrosis seems to do the trick! But of course now I need to get much more detailed so that I know exactly why such and such an experiment moves us toward answering those questions about how things work. I think I will begin by looking into the literature on how mechanical environment affects fibroblasts. For instance, it would be good to know how vocal fold fibroblasts change in stiffness when their substrate changes stiffness, or how they change in stiffness when they are vibrated at high frequencies. It would also be good to know how fibroblast stiffness relates to the secretion of certain pro- and anti-apoptotic signaling molecules (are these cytokines?) into the ECM. Perhaps there is a feedback mechanism in vocal fold fibrosis in which increased ECM tension causes increased fibroblast stiffness, which causes increased anti-apoptotic signaling and ECM deposition, which causes increased ECM tension, which ... ???

Woohoo!! I'm becoming a biologist! (sort of)