What's the long-term prognosis for a patient with fibromuscular dysplasia on an anti-platelet regimen? Until this month I wouldn't have understood the question or even been particularly interested. That was before the patient with this rare condition was my uncle and the person asking was my grandmother.

Unfortunately, the kind of research I do — fundamental aspects of yeast-cell division — doesn't provide the answers she's looking for. There are no side effects or case studies, and certainly no patients. Although I work on yeast cells because of their functional similarity to human cells, sheer curiosity is largely motivation enough. That has helped me understand a lot about yeast, but it doesn't do much for people like my uncle. I don't expect patients to run to their doctors saying, “I'm worried about the protein complexes forming at my origins of replication.”

Having a person in my family deal with a disease that's scarcely mentioned in the medical literature has changed my perspective. It's not that I want to drop what I'm doing and take up applied research — I realize important contributions to humanity come from both directed and broad research approaches. I do, though, feel a new sense of meaning in what I do. The idea that my work may some day, however indirectly, reach a patient is no longer an abstraction but an aspiration my grandmother and I can share.