• Question: Do you study bacteria in animals or people?

    Asked by 228brna42 to Ciarán on 10 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Ciarán O'Brien

      Ciarán O'Brien answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      Both!

      Right now I’m looking at the bacteria that live in humans so I can see how they affect depression, allergies, things like that.

      But I’ve also looked at the bacteria living in mice guts, as they’re a lot easier to work with, and we can do things with them we can’t do with people, like raise mice in a completely germ free environment, so they grow up with no bacteria at all in their gut, and compare them to regular mice, or mice that were born germ free then had a single type of bacteria introduced to their gut, and work out from there if that bacteria does anything to affect a mouse’s health and behaviour.

      I don’t do the mouse trials myself, I don’t like experimenting on animals. I just get sent the poop from scientists who work with the mice.

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