We got into Cell! This map will hopefully stake the path for our research the coming 2(!) years. Really, science is progressing fast and you have to be self-critical. Many things can be improved and this was really just our first stab at how to approach Th2. To give a number of examples…
- We should have looked at all Th-types in one go, not just Th2 and Th0
- 3 days is not enough of a time course. 10 days is ideal. Even longer for human!
- We need a better idea what “Th2” really mean. Once you start knocking it around, it becomes less obvious what you deal with. A whole-transcriptomic definition would already be an upgrade, but I suspect at some point we will need to include even more information
- Literature is strongly biased, and many times wrong. I think science will be like whenever you buy a new computer; you copy over the content of the previous harddrive and it takes 1% of the new one. Technology progresses so fast we might as well repeat all(!!) previous experiments with modern technology whenever we can, just to avoid any bias. It’s not even that expensive!
But on the positive side, we got CRISPR going and we already have a list of genes to follow up upon. Let’s aim higher next time 🙂 Also, they didn’t take our cover image this time. But we just need to submit another one next time we are there…