• Question: What is the best experiment/ test that you have run

    Asked by anon-284635 to Rebecca, Felicity, Lizzie, Callum on 3 Mar 2021. This question was also asked by anon-280685, anon-280697.
    • Photo: Rebecca Haigh

      Rebecca Haigh answered on 3 Mar 2021:

      Hi Rory, that’s a good question.

      I think I enjoy running the gamma spectrometry tests the most. This involves checking the presence and activity of different radionuclides in our samples. This can be really interesting to see what is present and try and figure out why. For example, in some of the marine samples (seaweed, silt) we can find low amounts of Iodine 131 which is present from hospital activities such as X-rays but due to Covid this result has dropped because a lot of the routine activities that would release this Iodine aren’t happening at the moment.

    • Photo: Felicity Hunter

      Felicity Hunter answered on 3 Mar 2021: last edited 3 Mar 2021 9:47 am

      Hi Rory! Thank you for the great question. My answer might sound a little gross at first but it gave me lots of interesting information. I tested the number of different types of bacteria living in the guts of animals by measuring the bacteria DNA in their poo! I will explain how I did this step by step. Firstly, I collected poo from animals and mashed it up into very small pieces using a tool (and wearing gloves!). I then added some water and chemicals to turn the poo sample into a liquid. Next, I put this liquid through a filter to get rid of all the unwanted stuff and to draw out the bacteria DNA from the liquid. The filter kind of acts like a magnet because the bacteria DNA sticks to it and all the unwanted stuff is flushed away through the filter. Next I added a different chemical to the filter to get the stuck bacteria DNA off the filter and into a clean tube. Now I have gotten rid of all the unwanted poo material and I am left with a tube containing only bacteria DNA! However, the bacteria DNA is in very tiny amounts so it is really hard to measure. To solve this, I used a fancy machine which makes thousands of copies of this bacteria DNA so it is much easier to measure. This machine also tells me how much bacteria was in the animal poo and which types of bacteria species were in there. This is important information as it tells me about the types of bacteria that are living inside the animal. If there are lots of friendly bacteria species, the animal is probably healthy but if there are lots of harmful species then the animal could get sick. I hope that made sense and that you found it interesting too! (It’s ok if you found it a bit gross too!).

    • Photo: Lizzie Pendlington

      Lizzie Pendlington answered on 4 Mar 2021:

      Hi Rory, I ran an evolutionary microbiology experiment which grew bacteria in antibiotics for a few weeks and then tested how the bacteria competed and changed. So we got to watch evolution happen which was very cool!

Comments

  • Photo: Nicola

    Nicola commented on :

    I think my favourite experiment that I do is something called a western blot. This lets me look at different proteins that I take out of cells (which I get out of the cells by mashing them up). It takes two days to do the whole thing and at the end you end up with the proteins stuck into a special type of paper and you then take a photograph of them. There are two ways to take the photograph- one way is by scanning the paper with a machine and I get to see the photo on a computer screen. The other way to do it is a by going into a dark room (that has absolutely no light!) and placing some special chemicals and a piece of xray film (the same stuff that you use to see an xray of a bone) on top of the paper. I then pass the xray film through a fancy machine and the image of the proteins gets transferred onto it and I can see what the proteins look like. This is one of the experiments that I do most often.