Profile

I’m a PhD student in the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Manchester. I went to Primary school in England until year 5 and then I was homeschooled in the USA! I eventually moved back to England for my GCSEs and A-levels and then I went to the University of York to study Biology. During my degree, I got the chance to work in San Francisco, California for a whole year which was amazing! At University, I met my partner Alexander (who is also my best friend!). Alex and I recently moved to Manchester together so I could start my PhD. In my spare time, I love to play guitar, sing, play video games and tennis. I also have two cats called Pingu and Wednesday  (who couldn’t be any different) and a ginormous dog called Bronte. 

Pingu yawning

Wednesday peeking

Bronte licking Alex!

Over 100 trillion bugs (microbes) live inside our guts including bacteria, archaea and fungi! These gut microbes make up a diverse ecosystem inside us called a “microbiome”. In fact, there are actually more microbes living inside our guts than there are human cells in our entire body! That means that your body is pretty much a walking microbial planet! But not to worry, most of our gut microbes come in peace. Many have no effect on our bodies whereas others are actually very good for our health! In fact, we would be very sick if we didn’t have our microbes. You might be thinking: “How do they survive in there?!” and that is a good question. Our gut microbes survive off the food we eat! In fact, they digest the dietary materials that are too difficult for our bodies to break down into the essential nutrients we need to live. That means that our gut microbes do us a very big favour every time we eat! So what exactly is my job? As a scientist, my job is to figure things out nobody knows yet. I am trying to figure out exactly how our gut microbes are good for our immune systems and how having lots of friendly gut microbes can prevent us from getting many illnesses including autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. For example, people who are sick with autoimmune diseases tend to have unhealthy microbiomes with lots of unfriendly bacteria. I also want to work out how our diets and our meal times affect the our community of friendly gut microbes For example, friendly gut microbes love to eat healthy foods such as leafy greens but harmful bacteria love junk food and sugary treats. That means that friendly bacteria cannot survive inside the guts of people who only eat junk food and these people are more likely to get sick. Now, you might be thinking: “how do we know about the gut microbes if they live inside our guts?!” which is a great question! In order to study the gut microbes, I have to measure the microbes that are in poo! Looking at cleaned up poo samples under the microscope tells me all about what is going on inside our guts. I know that sounds very messy (and a bit smelly) but I promise it is actually very interesting. Now is for my weirdest and most wonderful fact that you can gross out your friends with: Did you know that one day Doctors may actually treat patients with gut illnesses (like inflammatory bowel disease) by giving them a poo transplant from someone who has lots of friendly gut microbes?! That’s because the friendly microbes that live in healthy person’s poo can move home into the sick person’s gut and help their immune systems to fight the illness! This is a very new treatment but many scientists think it will work very well. Don’t worry if this all sounds very new to you because it is pretty new information for the whole world! Many people used to think that all microbes were harmful and should be killed. Scientists are only just beginning to unravel the importance of our microbes for our health. 

I always start my morning by planning my lab work for the afternoon. I spend the rest of the morning doing computer work such as typing up my lab work from the day before, looking at my experimental results and making graphs of the results, answering my emails and doing outreach activities (like this!). I try to get out for some fresh air at lunch time before I start my lab work in the afternoon. I also attend weekly lab meetings with the rest of my lab group where we chat about our experiments and our results. 

This is a photo of me in the lab. I have to wear safety goggles, a white lab coat and gloves at all times whilst working in the lab. This is because I work with chemicals that could damage my skin and eyes.

This is a photo of my lab bench! I have to write down everything I do in my lab notebook.

These are called pipettes. They are the tools I use to pick up tiny volumes of liquid.