So Much Can Change in 30 Minutes

On Wednesday, we talked to experts on the topics pertaining to our topics. We thought we were pretty well prepared going into the meetings. We had several questions written out for each of the experts and knew how to present our project to them.  We even knew how to pronounce their names (this was a larger problem than we had anticipated though).  We had people ready to take notes and were open to any information we could obtain from these people who know much more about Wnt signaling and viral vectors than we do.  There was one thing we were not completely prepared for:
"Yeah that is not going to work."
Neither of the experts actually said those words.  They were much kinder and more scientific, but that was the takeaway.  We learned from he viral vector expert that our choice of a virus was not ideal.  When we asked him for suggestions for a replacement, we were again reminded on how much we do not know.  We need to know how long our sequence is and what cells and how many cells we need to infect before we can really decide on a vector.  From the Wnt signaling expert, we found out that one of our issues will be that many of the cells that cause GI cancer are stem cells and that intestinal cells have a life span of about 5 days. There are also four main causes of GI cancer and we had not considered two of them.  After the conversations with the experts, we discussed a new system and each have areas to research, so we have not lost hope.  However, I have definitely been reminded of how little I know and how much I just did not consider. Sometimes the enormity of the subject is frustrating because I know that I will probably never fully understand all of it, but I think that is why the impact of a project is so important.  Even though I know that we will never complete this project in a lab, I am still motivated to push forward with my ignorance and try to just learn whatever I can to create a usable system because I want to help people and for there to be a simpler early detection system for cancer.  Science is great and all, but the "why" matters.