Consumer Facing Content
This category includes medical and science content written for general audiences and generally assumes that the reader has no science background. This is a fun category.
The goal is to engage the reader, and explain the science in a way that they can make sense of, which means finding coherence and relevance. We understand something when it fits into the scaffold of our world. And this is what stories do. Even a pure science explainer is a story. And the key is to include the right details to make the most meaningful story. All the important ones, and none of the un-important ones.
I then try to connect the abstract ideas and academic jargon to things that are familiar. To the scaffolding. The goal is always to get to those “aha” moments, when obscure academic jargon suddenly integrates. That is the difference between knowing the facts and understanding the science. And it is infinitely cooler when you understand it!
There is material that would fit under “Consumer Content” that would require a more professional tone– patient education material would be an example. The tone would change to be appropriately professional, but the goal is the same– making complex foreign ideas accessible and meaningful.
I love science, and I love explaining it. I love imagining readers making new connections and experiencing the same “wow” moments that I did. It is like experiencing that “wow” over and over again, every time I share it.
The following are excerpts from pieces I have written professionally, meant for general or consumer audiences. While I recognize there are likely scientists in these audiences, they are written so that someone without a science background can keep up. I assume roughly a high school biology level.
Each brief excerpt on this page has a “read more” link that will take you to a longer excerpt. Then on that page there is another “read more” link … no, I’m kidding, there’s just one!
None of the original pieces are included in their entirety. These are samples that demonstrate my style and approach.
heat Shock Proteins
Meet Your Heat Shock Proteins
Like many greats, heat shock proteins (HSPs) were discovered by accident. In 1962, the Italian scientist Ferruccio Ritossa was studying fruit fly genetics, when one morning he found an incubator to be set too high. Ritossa denied responsibility even in his write up of his new finding. He says "I do not remember whether it was John Pulitzer or Inge or Clara Ghindi or Giordana who shifted the temperature of my incubator, but one day I noticed a different puffing pattern!"[4] A puffing pattern signals genes being activated. Those genes were heat shock proteins. Butit would be years before the significance of that puffing pattern would be known to science.
Proteins 101
Before we dive in, let’s make sure we are on the same page. What exactly are proteins? Like, a piece of chicken? Smaller. We are diving into the cells of that chicken—the microscopic cells that make up every tissue and organ in your body.
Our cells are crowded places. They are not the clean, spacious line drawing from your high school biology textbook, with a nucleus and a single mitochondrion off to the side doing its job in peace, substrate molecules moseying over in a leisurely backstroke.
Our cells can contain billions of proteins. We have identified around genes for over 10,000 different human proteins, meaning different structures and jobs- like a hammer and a stapler, or some can be completely different in shape and function, like an exercise ball and tweezers. But they are all made from amino acids, and they all have a job to do, and are shaped for their job.