• Question: what was the best experiment you ever did

    Asked by poweg002 to Charlie, Eoin, Jemma, Julian, Steve on 18 Mar 2011. This question was also asked by qaisa001, jpkw2k11, crawleybeast.
    • Photo: Stephen Moss

      Stephen Moss answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Hi Poweg002

      I’ve really had to think about this one, as I’ve done an awful lot of experiments over the years. I think one of the most exciting was about 15 years ago, not long after some other scientists had just discovered a jellyfish protein called GFP, that glows with green fluorescence. We were able to fuse GFP with another protein we were working on and trying to understand, and then get cells to make that new ‘fusion protein’. When we looked at those cells under the microscope we could see our protein (thanks to the GFP it was fused to), and we saw it doing amazing things that we never knew about. Those observations led us on all sorts of new lines of research that kept us busy for almost another ten years!

    • Photo: Julian Rayner

      Julian Rayner answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Hey poweg002 and qaisa001. Recent one where we screened lots of red blood cell proteins and malaria parasite proteins to see what binds to what. Everyone predicted it wouldn’t work (technically not easy for various reasons), but it did, and we came up with something really novel and exciting.

      Next month the answer will probably be something completely different – that’s the great thing about science, you are always looking forward to the next best cool experiment to do.

    • Photo: Jemma Ransom

      Jemma Ransom answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Hmm, great question.

      I think probably one that I did in my final year at University, It was an experiment I designed to try and figure out what goes wrong in the brain during a psychiatric disease called schizophrenia. My supervisor at the time had told me not to do the experiment as he didn’t think it would work, and that it would be a massive waste of my time. However it did work, and it was a great feeling to have an experiment that I had designed and performed work and give the result I wanted

    • Photo: Charlie Ryan

      Charlie Ryan answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      hi poweg002 and gaaisa001. i think you’re both from thirstley right?? It was nice chatting to you on weds!
      I guess the best one i’ve ever done was blowing up a rocket as part of my masters project at university. We were using an explosive fuel, at just at the critical moment it started to decompose and created a large bang! A large bang that blew up the rocket sending bits of metal everywhere!! That was pretty cool.

    • Photo: Eoin Lettice

      Eoin Lettice answered on 18 Mar 2011:

      Hi poweg002,
      I’ve done loads of experiments at this stage but my favourite is still one of the first I did:
      I took some wheat plants and treated some with a fungicide and one with just water. Then I showed that the ones which had the fungicide were better able to withstand heat stress when I dipped them in hot water!
      It was a really simple and basic experiment but it’s still my fave because it was one of my firsts!

      Eoin

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