• Question: Do you like looking in poo?

    Asked by 439brna46 to Ciarán on 10 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Ciarán O'Brien

      Ciarán O'Brien answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      Not really. I mean, it’s poo! It’s not even my own poo! It’s nasty and smelly and messy, and have you ever seen a baby’s first ever poo? It’s mostly thick black gooey bile salts, it looks like someone put a bowl of liquorice in the microwave until it half-melted. Disgusting.

      But thankfully, I only have to measure out poo once. I can wash away all the nasty stuff, leaving just the DNA of the things that live in the poo. From there it’s just the nice clean science of molecular biology as I extract and purify the DNA and turn it into computer data. I like computer data. It doesn’t smell. And I love looking at computer data of the bacteria that live in poo, as it can tell you a whole lot of things about your physical and mental health.

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