Question: What's the most interesting piece of technology you've come across in all of your career?

Ciarán O'Brien answered on 12 Nov 2014:

That would probably be the DNA sequencer in my lab. It’s an amazing machine that can take a sample of DNA and work out molecule by molecule what the genetic code it contains it! DNA can be millions of molecules long and it’s very fragile, so the best way to analyse it is to make loads of copies, break it up into smaller chunks and work out what their code is, and then fit those codes back together into one big code like a jigsaw puzzle. Each copy will be broken up in different places, so the codes will overlap and we can figure out which bit goes where by matching up identical parts of the code. the machine then turns all this data into a computer file which we can analyse electronically, instead of having to grow the bacteria every time.