“What other people feel standing on the top of the mountain, I get from looking inside a cell,” says Gyorgyi Csankovszki. “Nature is beautiful at the maximum scale but also at the microscopic scale.”

Csankovszki, a microbiologist and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB), finds this swell of feeling from the work of basic science: a specific kind of research that aims to refine our understanding of natural phenomena for its own sake rather than for a specific purpose or application. In Csankovszki’s case, the work explores the way genetic material is structured, and how this structure influences its function. 

“We’re made up of many, many different cell types, but every cell has the exact same DNA sequence. Yet one cell turns into an eye cell, while another cell turns into a skin cell,” Csankovszki explains. “A cell destined to become a liver cell has every gene, but it only turns on those that make the proteins needed in a liver cell. It has to turn on that genetic light switch and turn off all the others, like those required to make skin or eyes or muscle or anything else.”

To better understand how this works, Csankovszki examines the differences in the X-chromosome genes of nematodes, a worm that is one millimeter long and only visible through a microscope. The motivation, she says, is curiosity. “I go in the direction of answering a question. I don’t focus on if it will be useful in the future,” she explains.

This type of exploration is the foundation of the world’s most powerful discoveries, and for Csankovszki that process is filled with joy. “Frankly, the greatest secret in our job is we get paid to play in a sandbox.”

Not So Basic

Research like Csankovszki’s exists across the natural sciences in LSA, in MCDB as well as the departments of chemistry, physics, and mathematics. And while it’s central to LSA’s mission, culture, and many of its transformative scientific innovations, understanding just what exactly basic science is is not so simple.

“It’s a really broad question,” says Bart Bartlett, professor of chemistry. “Basic science says, ‘I’m going to start with a system that I can imagine, that I can test in the lab, and ask some really simple questions that I know I can directly answer.’

“The key to the scientific method,” he continues, “is that every good hypothesis should be directly testable. Whether it works as planned or it doesn’t, there’s still knowledge that’s gained in the process, and there’s value in having that knowledge. It sets up what the next questions are.”

For Bartlett, basic science means using the scientific method to identify big questions. The questions identified by basic science may not solve humanity’s problems by themselves, but they certainly advance knowledge towards solutions.

Koch researches the dynamics of complex numbers. Complex numbers have two parts: a real number and an imaginary number. Her area of research falls under pure mathematics—the study of basic concepts that form the foundation of mathematics—and her work is highly visual.

“Complex numbers are very geometric objects: All of the complex numbers live in the complex plane,” Koch explains. “The computer can be used to visualize different transformations of the complex plane, which come from basic algebraic formulas.”

Koch uses the computer to actually see how a given dynamical system appears on a complex plane, and uses different colors to model the various kinds of mathematical behavior. The images that emerge are intricate fractals that display complicated geometry.

“My research feels like being in conversation with Pierre Fatou or Gaston Julia, the mathematicians who lay much of the framework for complex systems 100 years ago. Working without a computer, they never got to see these beautiful images,” says Koch. “I can’t imagine not being able to see them. They’re incredibly beautiful. This is a subject that wants to be drawn and appreciated, and to do that with only a pencil and piece of paper is amazing. It makes me think ‘What are people going to be saying about us in 100 years?’”

What Makes Us Human

For nuclear physicist and LSA physics professor Christine Aidala, the pursuit of knowledge inherent to basic science is part of our nature. “Desire for knowledge is part of what makes us human,” she says.

Aidala studies the internal workings of protons. She does experimental studies of the strong nuclear force, which is described by the theory of quantum chromodynamics, and investigates how subcomponents of protons and neutrons interact.

“More recently, I’ve focused on how these subnuclear components form new bound states after two protons break apart,” Aidala explains. “There’s been a lot more work over the past 50 years trying to understand what’s going on inside the proton, but my current focus is more underexplored. Previously, the goal was to understand what goes on in the proton the instant it breaks apart. But I want to trace what happens to the components themselves after the collision, instead of just using them as a way to understand what was happening in the proton before the collision.”

Aidala also researches the foundations of physics, seeking to identify and synthesize assumptions underlying different branches of physics into a common framework. For both of these projects, Aidala’s research is done without a specific application in mind.

“I expect that sometime in the future, there could be applications for my research, but I couldn’t necessarily tell you what they are now,” she says. “We want to better understand what’s going on inside protons, neutrons, and nuclei in terms of subnuclear particles, and we want a clearer picture of how the strong nuclear force works in lots of different conditions and circumstances. Historically, that kind of research often leads to applications decades later, but first you need to understand what’s going on and how it works before you can make applications for it.”

Pure Curiosity

Articulating the wonder inherent to their work can be challenging for basic scientists, especially when it can’t be couched in a practical application. “I often have a hard time when people ask what I do,” says Csankovszki. “When I try to explain, they say ‘Why would you want to know that?’ I try to explain more about DNA and the light switch idea, and I have to keep explaining until I get to the point when I say, ‘These light switches don’t work well in cancer cells so we need to understand them.’ And the moment I use the word ‘cancer,’ they’re like ‘Ah! Now I get it.’