• Question: what is your favourite experiment to carry out and why?

    Asked by achilds to Enda, Jean, Kate, Kev, Tim on 9 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by adser.
    • Photo: Jean Bourke

      Jean Bourke answered on 9 Nov 2012:

      Ok, this might sound overly simple but I love playing with indicator. An indicator is a substance that changes colour according to how acidic or basic something is. For example milk is slightly basic and vinegar is acidic. If take some dilute acid and add universal indicator it will turn bright red. You can then add a bit of base, drop by drop and make all the colours of the rainbow. There are a couple of different ways to do this and many of them are on youtube. This is one on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdprNTwb4Ks. I just like the colours coz as an organic chemistry pretty much everything I make is a white solid or a pale yellow oil (boring).

      That’s a “for fun” experiment. In my own work I love doing simple things that work quickly and easily and require little accuracy or cleaning up! Often in chemistry an experiment, that you think will work, doesn’t; when this happens it’s nice to go and do something that definitely works!

    • Photo: Tim Downing

      Tim Downing answered on 10 Nov 2012:

      I like looking at the evolution and history of species, so one experiment I enjoy is to draw big family trees of them. We first look at their DNA and genetics and see what bits are the same and what bits are different. Then next we count these differences up so that we can put a number on how similar two individuals are. Then we can slowly put together their relationships in a family tree format. If our individuals are very similar, then it will tell us about their recent history, like which parents had which children. But if they are very different, then we can say things about the ancient history, like are they from different countries or environments.
      Tim

    • Photo: Enda O'Connell

      Enda O'Connell answered on 12 Nov 2012:

      @achilds

      I like “high throughput” experiments, where you can look at lots of different samples at the same time. This is a great type of experiment to do because it means that you get lots of information very quickly, is cheaper than doing each experiment one-by-one, and it means that you can often find interesting things that you would never have thought to look for if you had to pick a smaller number of samples.

      For example, we carried out a high throughput drug screening experiment using Janus the robot, where we looked at the ability of 1500 different drugs to kill cancer cells. If we had to do this by hand, we would have had to pick 10 or 20 drugs to try out, which would actually have taken longer to do, and chances are that we might not have found anything interesting. We found 18 drugs that killed different numbers of cancer cells, a couple of which had never been looked at before, and which we are now looking at in greater detail.

      I’ve also worked on Microarray projects, where you can look at how cells or tissue are different at the level of their genes. Normally, you could only look at one gene at a time, but with microarrays you can look at tens of thousands of genes in a week! One example of this was when we looked at why people with diabetes, who are given stents to keep their damaged blood vessels open, often develop a blockage called restenosis. We discovered over 100 different genes which were having a bad effect, and one in particular, that might lead to a new form of therapy for diabetic patients who are given stents.

      The one downside to this type of experiment is that you produce so much data that it can take you weeks or months to analyse, keeping you out of the lab. That is why we work with mathematicians called Bioinformaticians, who have an understanding of biology, and can help us find the most useful information and patterns in our data, explaining what is happening in the cell.

    • Photo: Kevin Lomasney

      Kevin Lomasney answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      Well, I really love microscopy!!!! I work a lot with microscopes and one of my favourite is what’s called a confocal microscope. With this microscope you can take amazing 3D images of the insides of cells and tissues! You can even take 3D videos if you spend enough time at it!!!

      Microscopes are amazing, to me its like looking into another world, ( almost like using a telescope to look into space. There are just as many mysteries! I have never worked with electron microscopes but if I ever get the chance I will jump at it!! The details you can see with these are incredible!

      Aside from my fascination with microscopy, I also do a lot of electrophysiology. This means that I use electrical currents to measure physiological responses! In fact its a very good way to see if a bacteria is causing changes in your bowel!

      So as you can see I love working with light and electricity! I hope I’m not addicted to power!

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