• Question: Have you ever made any scientific breakthroughs?

    Asked by lanky to Charlie, Eoin, Jemma, Julian, Steve on 17 Mar 2011.
    • Photo: Jemma Ransom

      Jemma Ransom answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Sort of, I found out that vitamin A is stored and degraded in a sub-compartment of brain cells called an organelle. It’s a breakthrough in that noone knew this was the case before, however I don’t know what this means yet for human medicine.

    • Photo: Julian Rayner

      Julian Rayner answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Hi lanky. Depends on what you mean by breakthrough!

      We recently identified a protein that seems to be essential for malaria parasites to recognize and invade human red blood cells. It seems like a breakthrough – something to target that could prevent the parasites from infecting you and therefore could treat disease. Turning it into a real breakthrough – developing the drug or vaccine that could actually be used, will take some time though.

      Another was I was involved in discovering that malaria parasite originally jumped into humans from gorillas. That was really exciting to me, because it helps us understand the origins of the human epidemic. It also might be important when we think about eradicating malaria – it is important to know whether parasites could jump back into us from gorillas, even if we managed to wipe them all out in humans.

    • Photo: Charlie Ryan

      Charlie Ryan answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      hi lanky no i haven’t but maybe someday!! I think you have to be in the right palce at the right time to make a big breakthrough – and sometimes it’s importance isn’t realised until after your death!
      I think being a scientist is less about big breakthroughs (and aiming to make big breakthroughs) and more about a small breakthrough/discovery on what you are currently invesitgating. You can only investigate what ends up in front of you i guess!

    • Photo: Eoin Lettice

      Eoin Lettice answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Hi lanky,
      I’ve made a few small breakthroughs. Nothing huge or newsworthy, but all scientists make little breakthroughs everyday, when experiments go right or they find out a little more about what they are studying.
      Hoipefully I’ll make one huge breakthrough in my scientific career, but if I don’t I’m quite happy just to play my part in the process.

      Eoin

    • Photo: Stephen Moss

      Stephen Moss answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Hi Lanky

      I’ve made lots of scientific breakthroughs, as do most scientists. Most times these breakthroughs are quite small so they just add another useful nugget to the sum total of human knowledge. But some of our recent work has led to a breakthrough that we think might be a bit bigger and more important, and with any luck our story might make the national newspapers later this year when we publish it.

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