Just Supplementary Figures

After seven months, I have hung up my experiment that I started in June. It is not that I did not get any results or that nothing was going to work. In fact, my DNA construct worked, and I was able to get images.

“They’re supplementary figure material” I told a friend.

For those of my Dear Readers who are not super science-y, supplementary figures are figures that are added to the end of a paper, or are placed in a separate journal. It’s not that they are not important figures; they just don’t have a high impact. Supplementary figures are often experiments that are done to appease a reviewer or small support for the original idea.

When you spend seven months working on something, you want the results to be important, or at least important enough to be included on a “real” figure in the manuscript.

There are many moments in our lives that feel like Supplementary Figures.

Day to day life is not always exciting. While people are often saying that “every moment matters,” we know that not each second should change the entire course of our lives. In fact, there is a condition called hyperthemesia where the patient cannot forget anything about their lives, and it actually cripples them.

Not every moment needs to be a big deal.

We want to keep investigating parts of our lives that do not play a role in our personal or professional development. We believe that we are looking at what we want to change or what we think is perfect, but at the end of the day, we know that we need to stop turning our wheels.

Sometimes you just need to see a part of your life and say goodbye to it.

For example, many people participated in a sport or art form in high school, never to get on the field or stage again. While some may be able to return, most will have to hang up their uniform/costume. It hurts, but you have to do so.

However, you should be grateful for that time because it helped shaped who you are. Just as the supplemental figures are able to shape the paper, so too can these past moments.

But you are not your past.

Ended relationships should be viewed in the same way. I love seeing my old friends/crushes/exes find new connections.

For me, seeing new relationships with old companions is like going to a high school football game as an alumnae. While I know that I do not belong on the field anymore, I know that there was a lot of joy in that moment, and I know that those women on the field are experiencing what I did, maybe even moreso. Some may have been on the team for longer than I was on varsity. 

So too is each new relationship.

Regardless of how your relationship ended with a friend/crush/ex ended, you should not have to feel like you need to dwell on it. Yes, feel what you may, but remember that that past was nothing more than a high school football game. Happy memories are good to have, but are not worth looking back on for much longer.

“There’s a light at the end of letting go.” ~Letting Go, Sawyer

I will admit that I am the worst at “falsifying the data” of my life. When something happens to me, and when I feel something other than my usual joy, I want it to be important. It can be happy. It can be sad. It can even be angry. All I want is for people to hear my story and feel something because of it. I often try to make these moments more significant than “the data” would show.

Trying to make a mountain out of a mole-hill does not change anyone’s life. What happened happened.

No one cares.

I mean, people often skip the supplemental figures anyways!

Now I would like to point out that there are some types of supplementary figures that we really should pay attention to. Maybe we don’t spend a lot of time on them, like we would the real figures, but these figures are important in their own right. 

So too are the little moments of our lives.

We just need to put them in the proper perspective

My work from the past 30 weeks taught me this lesson. I study a protein called StARD9. It has a signal that tells it to go to the lysosome, like a zip code if you will. I removed everything from that signal onward to see what would happen in the cell.

Nothing major happened.

The protein just floated around the cell. (Or was soluble for you Bio Kids)

It was not groundbreaking for my lab to know that StARD9 did not go to the lysosome without its signal. While it was what we were expecting, these results did not make a huge difference in the course of our research. It did not reach our specific aims, and it would not make the final figures on our StARD9 paper.

These results may not have been important to me

But they could be of value to someone else.

Recently my lab found a poster abstract of a Japenese doctor who had a patient with this exact mutation. It resulted in some serious developmental defects, and the physician could not explain what happened to this young girl. For however long it has been since this girl was diagnosed, the parents of this patient have been without an explanation.

My results don’t tell them anything.

I won’t be getting a first author publication off of my first year work recreating this patient’s mutation. All I may have to show for it is a supplemental figure with the somewhat non-descript phenotype of StARD9 just floating around.

Sometimes the little moments of our lives mean more to others than they do to us.

I like to think that someday, when the parents might be given the StARD9 manuscript and see what should happen when it is in the lysosome, that maybe they could have some closure.

All from a supplemental figure of their daughter’s mutation and a little bit of connect the dots in their reading.

While it is very important to remember the impact of our lives on the world, it is also important to look at our lives properly. I know that my work could have broader impacts, but I cannot dwell on the past. It doesn’t help anyone, and it doesn’t change the results. No matter how much work you have put in, the broader impacts and the larger figures are not solely dependent on your supplemental figure and your small moments with those around you.

I know that there are people who have benefitted from decisions I made, suggestions I gave, and relationships I fostered.

I joke about how I should get all of the credit, but I shouldn’t. Each of the moments that have led to greater things for others in my life very rarely impact me. They are just supplementary figures to my life story. 

My friends are the ones who did the work to get the figures/big moments. They are the ones who made things work, took the risks, and found their place in the world. And much like the sports that I can no longer play and the dances I will no longer dance, I know that I have to hang my hat and move forward.

Do I have to forget my past?

No.

I just need to accept that there are parts of my life that are now parts of someone else’s life.

We will all play some role in the lives of those around us. We will all make a difference, whether we recognize it or not. The same goes for each life that has entered our own. For however long we know someone, they will have the opportunity to make an impact on our lives.

Even the smallest moments with someone may make the biggest difference in the future.

For me, it was 30 weeks with a point deletion on basepair 11760 in a patient I’ll never meet.

While we should not focus all of our attention on the little moments of our lives, we should be willing to give the “supplemental figures” in our lives an opportunity. Take time to read the moments that we are thankful for, feel heartbreak over, and are intrigued by. Maybe what we do won’t make a big difference, and maybe what we experience won’t matter to someone else.

What does matter is that we are grateful for all of the effort we put in to this life.

To the people and places and experiences that served as supplemental figures in my life

I am ever so thankful for y’all.

God Bless.