"Speaker 1: My name is Joe Kliegman and I'm a post-doc in the Derisi lab at UCSF.
So right now, one of the, the projects that I'm working on that I'm most excited about
is an analogy project.
And basically, we're trying to find a genetic signature for anaphylactic allergy.
You know, some people are allergic to milk, some people are allergic to pollen, some people
are allergic to peanuts and the problem is is nobody understands quite how that works
and you know they know the molecules in your body that are responsible for that allergy
but they don't really know what goes wrong with those molecules and if we understand
what goes wrong with those molecules we can both develop diagnostic tools to diagnose
and say oh yeah like you have this bad allergy.
And we can also kind of figure out therapies to cure allergy.
So I grew up kind of in a on a subsistence goat farm and in, in central Washington State.
We didn't have electricity, we didn't have running water when as a small child.
My dad was, I guess an environmental activist and he did a lot of work trying to stop a,
a gold mine that was proposed close to where I grew up.
He was, he was ultimately successful in large part because of scientists who testified in
court on our behalf.
I don't know, my parents always were, were always you know encouraged me to be interested
in the natural world, encouraged me to experiment with my surroundings, kind of due to i guess
a unique set of circumstances I ended up in science and it stuck.
A typical day is I come in and try to, try to get whatever experiments that I planned
for that day rolling.
Matt might be, you know, setting up an incubation kind of taking some patients' samples like
patient blood and extracting the nucleic acids out of the patient blood so like I can do
experiments on them.
An important, an important part of lab I think, any day of the week, is coming in and talking
to people.
So what are you doing?
Speaker 2: This is a collaboration with the Vale lab.
They have a cool thing.
They're doing RNA pulldowns on proteins.
So I wanna use this technique for vita samples with her plasmodium stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay is is there something like is there something on the surface of plasmodium
that recognizes
Speaker 2: Well it would be life saving, so
Speaker 1: Because I think research is this, this cyclical process of doing experiments,
seeing, you know, the results that those experiments tell you and then kind of talking about the
your results with a lot of people that have different perspectives and you know I think
we're really lucky in this lab to have medical doctors and neurologists, dentists kind of
like people, people of all different kind of academic persuasions and training.
They all have like really different things to say and you know you might not like agree
with what they say like that or, or they might kind of in, in the space of five minutes completely
change your thinking of, like a project.
Speaker 2: No, no, so the RNA is the motif and the
Speaker 1: The RNA is the the motif
Speaker 2: And then the proteins bind to it so what he wants to understand is what are
all the proteins that are involved in this
Speaker 1: I think that people tend to kind of underestimate how much of Science is really
just talking to people and talking with people about ideas.
I guess I chose this lab because having, having like a lively dialogue like a lively back
and forth like for me is like really important to kind of stimulate my own thinking.
So I think that's primarily what I was actually I mean and, and Joe's also, he kind of like
chose, chosen a field that I was really compelled by.
You know, infectious disease like effects millions of people around the world and he
has like a really clear mission statement of helping people from I guess like more,
more kind of disadvantaged socio-economic and a contacts and developing nations so I
really appreciated that too.
You know, I've done some research that I like but it mostly like I think I'm like proud
of the people around me and proud of the people that I get to work with on a, a daily basis."