Improved methods for molecular analyses are obviously central for medical research. I will describe herein our work developing tools to reveal molecular states in health and disease. I will recount how I got started in this endeavor, and how our early work characterizing genetic variation led onto high-throughput protein measurements and to techniques for imaging the distribution of proteins and their activity states in tissues. I will also describe a more recent technique to measure even exceedingly rare genetic variants in order to monitor recurrence of disease for tumor patients.