Dr Philip Smith, Digital and Education Editor of Gut and Honorary Consultant Gastroenterologist at the Royal Liverpool Hospital, Liverpool, UK interviews Professor Kathy DelGiorno, from the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA, on the paper 'It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness: single-cell transcriptomics sheds new light on pancreas biology and disease' published in paper copy in Gut in June 2023 and available online: https://gut.bmj.com/content/72/6/1211