Floating in ovalbumin

As part of my research here at the University of British Columbia, I spend time looking at the sequence of the hen egg protein ovalbumin and wondering what an immune response to it might look like. (Not that a person would normally mount an immune response to it, but immunologists like to inject it into mice or give it to cells in a dish and see what happens. Probably, I'm thinking, for historical reasons: Egg whites are sterile, and ovalbumin is the major protein constituent of egg whites.)

Did I say I spend time looking at the sequence of ovalbumin (or OVA, for short)? I meant to say I spend a lot of time looking at the sequence of OVA. In fact, OVA is so well studied by immunologists that the first well understood antigen (that which triggers the immune response and specifically the creation of antibodies) was a portion of OVA known by its amino acid sequence, SIINFEKL. Pronounced sin-'feck-el, it also happens to make a handy proxy swear word of the "Oh fudge!" variety.

Inevitably, on quiet afternoons spent puzzling over the ways OVA might be engineered to test different hypotheses, my mind starts to wander. I've found that my mental wanderings aren't subject to neat stops and starts. They sometimes keep going long after I intend them to, like a flywheel that becomes detached and keeps spinning. Often those wanderings go off-track, outside the lines, and burst into parts unknown. So it happened with OVA too.

Two days ago I awoke in that gentle time of day when the sun starts to illume the ground and found myself cold and curled into the Star Child position from 2001. I was half-awake, floating in the turbid residues of a dream, and not at all sure how I was breathing, where I was, or how I'd gotten here. I felt hungry but no sense that lifting a forkful of food to my mouth would satisfy the craving. And knowing not in that moment how I kept myself alive, I thought -- I actually thought -- It's a good thing I'm floating in ovalbumin. (OVA provides the unborn chick with nutrients.)

Yes, I was floating in ovalbumin.

I thought ovalbumin would keep me alive.

I'm glad no one was around to hear any of that.

The thought lodged itself in my brain, and even after I woke up and roused my senses, the feeling stayed with me. I don't know what it means -- maybe I should work on another protein besides OVA, maybe I still want to study ornithology like I did when I was a kid, or maybe I should set an alarm to get up -- but the feeling of being in utero was unmistakable.