Dr. Diego Bohórquez

But then not only we had a green fluorescence protein, we had optogenetics.

we had a rabies modified to be able to trace how it is that neurons connect at one synapse, which was a dream.

I think that, in fact, that was the dream of Francis Crick when he was at the South.

He talked about having the way to control.

Yes.

So then you could isolate the cells, and then you could do sequencing technology to see, like, what are the genes that these cells are expressing?

And then you can start to understand the makeup of the cells.

In 2009, Hans Clevers, a scientist...

in the Netherlands did a beautiful experiment.

He discovered these factors that will trigger a receptor of the stem cells in the intestinal epithelium and will form literally a mini gut in a dish.

These cells will be all lined up and then they will have a lumen.

And I remember seeing some of these papers coming out when I was a PhD student and I was already studying the gut.

So it was inspiring to see all of the things that all of a sudden you could do, right?

So when I began studying the cells, immediately by isolating the cells and simply observing the cells in the native tissue of these mice models,

it quickly became evident that some of the cells had a very peculiar anatomy.

Some of them had these very prominent arms at the base, like literally like in the Sistine Chapel, Adam reaching out to God, right?

Like with a hand, the cells will have that type of anatomical features and even ending with a little hand at the end of that arm.

And obviously, I immediately thought, like, why would a cell that it is supposed to react to food and release hormones into the bloodstream or just in the vicinity will invest so much energy into developing an arm, right?

So then I started to look, well, perhaps it is because it's providing a bridge directly into the cell.

vasculature into the vessels to put the hormones into the bloodstream, right?