full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Danny Hillis: Understanding cancer through proteomics

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Basically, what we do is we take a drop of blood out of a pitanet, and we sort out the poertins in the drop of bolod according to how much they weigh, how silrpepy they are, and we arrange them in an image. And so we can look at lrelailty hunerdds of thousands of features at once out of that drop of blood. And we can take a different one tomorrow, and you will see your proteins tomorrow will be different — they'll be different after you eat or after you sleep. They really tell us what's going on there. And so this picture, which looks like a big smudge to you, is actually the thing that got me really thrilled about this and made me feel like we were on the right track. So if I zoom into that picture, I can just show you what it mnaes. We sort out the proteins — from left to right is the weight of the fragments that we're getting, and from top to bottom is how slippery they are. So we're zooming in here just to show you a little bit of it. And so each of these lines rpeenetrss some signal that we're getting out of a piece of a protein. And you can see how the lines occur in these little groups of bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. And that's because we're measuring the weight so precisely that — carbon comes in different ispootes, so if it has an etxra neutron on it, we actually measure it as a different chemical. So we're actually measuring each isotope as a different one.

Open Cloze


Basically, what we do is we take a drop of blood out of a _______, and we sort out the ________ in the drop of _____ according to how much they weigh, how ________ they are, and we arrange them in an image. And so we can look at _________ ________ of thousands of features at once out of that drop of blood. And we can take a different one tomorrow, and you will see your proteins tomorrow will be different — they'll be different after you eat or after you sleep. They really tell us what's going on there. And so this picture, which looks like a big smudge to you, is actually the thing that got me really thrilled about this and made me feel like we were on the right track. So if I zoom into that picture, I can just show you what it _____. We sort out the proteins — from left to right is the weight of the fragments that we're getting, and from top to bottom is how slippery they are. So we're zooming in here just to show you a little bit of it. And so each of these lines __________ some signal that we're getting out of a piece of a protein. And you can see how the lines occur in these little groups of bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. And that's because we're measuring the weight so precisely that — carbon comes in different ________, so if it has an _____ neutron on it, we actually measure it as a different chemical. So we're actually measuring each isotope as a different one.

Solution


  1. literally
  2. represents
  3. patient
  4. isotopes
  5. extra
  6. means
  7. blood
  8. proteins
  9. hundreds
  10. slippery

Original Text


Basically, what we do is we take a drop of blood out of a patient, and we sort out the proteins in the drop of blood according to how much they weigh, how slippery they are, and we arrange them in an image. And so we can look at literally hundreds of thousands of features at once out of that drop of blood. And we can take a different one tomorrow, and you will see your proteins tomorrow will be different — they'll be different after you eat or after you sleep. They really tell us what's going on there. And so this picture, which looks like a big smudge to you, is actually the thing that got me really thrilled about this and made me feel like we were on the right track. So if I zoom into that picture, I can just show you what it means. We sort out the proteins — from left to right is the weight of the fragments that we're getting, and from top to bottom is how slippery they are. So we're zooming in here just to show you a little bit of it. And so each of these lines represents some signal that we're getting out of a piece of a protein. And you can see how the lines occur in these little groups of bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. And that's because we're measuring the weight so precisely that — carbon comes in different isotopes, so if it has an extra neutron on it, we actually measure it as a different chemical. So we're actually measuring each isotope as a different one.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
treat cancer 2
treating cancer 2
french restaurant 2
special cases 2
medical history 2
applied minds 2
infectious disease 2


Important Words


  1. arrange
  2. basically
  3. big
  4. bit
  5. blood
  6. bottom
  7. bump
  8. carbon
  9. chemical
  10. drop
  11. eat
  12. extra
  13. features
  14. feel
  15. fragments
  16. groups
  17. hundreds
  18. image
  19. isotope
  20. isotopes
  21. left
  22. lines
  23. literally
  24. means
  25. measure
  26. measuring
  27. neutron
  28. occur
  29. patient
  30. picture
  31. piece
  32. precisely
  33. protein
  34. proteins
  35. represents
  36. show
  37. signal
  38. sleep
  39. slippery
  40. smudge
  41. sort
  42. thousands
  43. thrilled
  44. tomorrow
  45. top
  46. track
  47. weigh
  48. weight
  49. zoom
  50. zooming