Research research research

A lot of people ask me what Lenny does. I ask him this on a regular basis too, so don't feel ashamed. It's complicated but it is really cool. This post covers a few items of research that I hear about often. I apologize in advance for the innaccuracies undoubtedly present here... I don't really know what I'm talking about, but trust Len will correct me at a later date.

First up is a picture of Lenny's recent poster from Diabetes Day. I don't know why I though science fair-type poster boards were a high school thing, but evidently they continue right through professional degrees and beyond. You should be able to view the details of the poster by clicking the picture to enlarge it. In plain English, Lenny's looking at insulin's counterpart glucagon; when your insulin is high, your glucagon is low and vice versa. Not much is known about glucagon as most diabetes research has concentrated on insulin even though it clearly plays a large role in the disease. Len is looking specifically at how it is sorted from the golgi to the secretory granule (think like how a postman decides where the mail is supposed to go). Seeing stuff like this really encourages you that the money you donate to the Diabetes Association or any other research group in Canada really does make it to researchers who are discovering things. Actually! It's really cool.
I'll only post one more poster so as not to bore you all to death. Valeria, featured in the post on the Lawson Holiday party, has a really cool project looking at lung injuries. The stuff lining your lungs, surfactant, is actually a type of "soap." When stomache acid, "gastric aspiration", enters the lungs, problems happen and it can lead to multi organ failure. Valeria is researching this process but to be honest, I'm not even sure even that much of a blurb is 100% accurate so I'll leave the picture to explain it in better science-y terms.


The last really cool experimenters coming to mind right now are those working in the Hand and Upper Limb Centre (the HULC Lab). The Hulc lab can do crazy things like make dead hands move but they can also do really helpful things like help discover ways to improve current treatments for those suffering from various hand and upper limb problems. As someone who has had problems with her hands in the past (yay tendonitis), I cannot imagine how grateful some patients must be for the discoveries that have come out of this lab. You can read a list of their current projects here , here, and here.