Courtesy of Maja Klevanski

Pay no attention to this housefly. We'll get to it later, but first, how about a "Do You Recognize This?" quiz.

If I say "DNA," what do you see? Well, instantly, you see one of these:

But what if I say "protein"? What comes to mind? Anything?

Well, for many people, "protein" is what you find on a plate ...

But if you are summoning up a science-y image, what would it be? You know proteins are small, microscopically small. You may not know how important they are, but they are very. They make all living things grow, repair, operate. Deep down, in your cells, they are the workers that move things around, that build, destroy, copy, attach, react they are absolutely essential, and yet if you put one on the cover of Time Magazine, most people would say, "What's that?"

What's That?

They have no "face," no image that ordinary people recognize. But as they become more newsy Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, type-2 diabetes are all caused by defective proteins you will be seeing them on front pages, TV, magazine covers. Proteins are about to get much more famous.

Which raises the question: What should they look like?

In real life, they are large, very complicated molecules. Science reporters (and scientists too) need an edited, media-friendly version that will give the public a sense of what proteins do.

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Close Your Eyes And Imagine A Protein. See Anything? A Housefly, Maybe?