Hi nov003, the research I’m doing is looking at the human immune system (a very small part of it). Our immune system is essential for us to defend against all the little nasties (pathogens) that we come into contact with all the time. Whenever we eat, breathe or touch things, there’s probably some pathogens in there that could cause an infection. Luckily our immune system is there to find these pathogens and destroy them before they can multiply and become a real problem.
The immune system is made up of different cells and molecules that have different jobs. The type of cell I work on is a dendritic cell. These cells engulf a pathogen (a lot like swallowing it) then carry it around to show to other cells. It’s like a warning system, saying to the other cells “If you see anything else that looks like this then you need to kill it”.
I’m interested in how the dendritic cells goes from swallowing a pathogen to showing it to other cells. I think that the protein I’m studying helps it to do this and I want to find out how.
The research I do won’t cure a disease or create a new medicine, but it will help someone else to do that in a few years time (I hope!) by providing information about how this cell works.
While my research won’t necessarily lead to medical breakthroughs, it will add to what we know about animal evolution. I hope that I will be able to learn more about how mammals and some lizards evolved to give birth to live young, instead of laying eggs.
Finding out new information like this is really important, because you never know what you might find. While studying lizards, I accidently found a cancer protein! It had ony ever been found in tumours that were difficult to treat, but I found it in the uterus of a lizard. Weird, I know! But I would never have found it if I didn’t look. My discovery might tell us about how cancer evolved in animals, and knowing how it evolved could give us clues about how to treat it.
A few different ways:
1) We’ve found a way to make a drug taken by millions of people in Africa. Our version of the drug doesn’t have side effects (make you sick) and doesn’t taste bad (unlike the drug people take now). We’re hoping our new method will be used to make tons of the drug so they stay healthier. The drug’s called “praziquantel” and the disease is called “Bilharzia” if you want to read about it.
2) We’re making a molecule in my lab that should change colour (and actually emit light) when it bumps into a breast cancer cell. The National Breast Cancer Foundation gave us money to do this research. Hopefully it will help us see breast cancer earlier, which means we can treat it better.
3) We find new ways to make molecules that are less energy-consuming and are better for the environment. These methods help the chemical industry (people who make plastics, medicines etc) to make their stuff more efficiently.
4) We’re about to start a project to discover a new drug for malaria. We want to get everyone in the world working on the web to help us out – getting lots of people on a problem will make the research faster, and we can do that using the internet. We won’t keep anything secret (we’re not using “patents”) which hopefully means when we finally find a drug we’ll be able to keep the cost of it very low.
My forensic research is essentially kitchen chemistry. Finding safer reagents for forensic science. Ideally, these would be safe enough to eat, hence the link to kitchen chemistry. That’s why my collaborators and I have been looking at foodstuffs and natural products for use as fingerprinting reagents, and for use to revisualise erased serial numbers.
My other research is in the area of science education. How can people learn and understand science better? Which bleach is better? That takes science understanding to read the label on the bottle at the supermarket. Are the politicians right about a carbon emissions trading scheme? Our society depends on science and technology and on a knowledge of science and technology. So hopefully my research in this area will help you and your teachers create a soceity that understands these issues and can make good decisions.
Hi nov003, the research I’m doing is looking at the human immune system (a very small part of it). Our immune system is essential for us to defend against all the little nasties (pathogens) that we come into contact with all the time. Whenever we eat, breathe or touch things, there’s probably some pathogens in there that could cause an infection. Luckily our immune system is there to find these pathogens and destroy them before they can multiply and become a real problem.
The immune system is made up of different cells and molecules that have different jobs. The type of cell I work on is a dendritic cell. These cells engulf a pathogen (a lot like swallowing it) then carry it around to show to other cells. It’s like a warning system, saying to the other cells “If you see anything else that looks like this then you need to kill it”.
I’m interested in how the dendritic cells goes from swallowing a pathogen to showing it to other cells. I think that the protein I’m studying helps it to do this and I want to find out how.
The research I do won’t cure a disease or create a new medicine, but it will help someone else to do that in a few years time (I hope!) by providing information about how this cell works.
2
While my research won’t necessarily lead to medical breakthroughs, it will add to what we know about animal evolution. I hope that I will be able to learn more about how mammals and some lizards evolved to give birth to live young, instead of laying eggs.
Finding out new information like this is really important, because you never know what you might find. While studying lizards, I accidently found a cancer protein! It had ony ever been found in tumours that were difficult to treat, but I found it in the uterus of a lizard. Weird, I know! But I would never have found it if I didn’t look. My discovery might tell us about how cancer evolved in animals, and knowing how it evolved could give us clues about how to treat it.
0
A few different ways:
1) We’ve found a way to make a drug taken by millions of people in Africa. Our version of the drug doesn’t have side effects (make you sick) and doesn’t taste bad (unlike the drug people take now). We’re hoping our new method will be used to make tons of the drug so they stay healthier. The drug’s called “praziquantel” and the disease is called “Bilharzia” if you want to read about it.
2) We’re making a molecule in my lab that should change colour (and actually emit light) when it bumps into a breast cancer cell. The National Breast Cancer Foundation gave us money to do this research. Hopefully it will help us see breast cancer earlier, which means we can treat it better.
3) We find new ways to make molecules that are less energy-consuming and are better for the environment. These methods help the chemical industry (people who make plastics, medicines etc) to make their stuff more efficiently.
4) We’re about to start a project to discover a new drug for malaria. We want to get everyone in the world working on the web to help us out – getting lots of people on a problem will make the research faster, and we can do that using the internet. We won’t keep anything secret (we’re not using “patents”) which hopefully means when we finally find a drug we’ll be able to keep the cost of it very low.
0
I don’t know. My research is based on a question that I have that no one has answered before. I wasn’t thinking of saving the world at the time.
I do hope that my research findings will lead to better ways of talking about science so it’s not some boring thing we do in school and labs.
0
My forensic research is essentially kitchen chemistry. Finding safer reagents for forensic science. Ideally, these would be safe enough to eat, hence the link to kitchen chemistry. That’s why my collaborators and I have been looking at foodstuffs and natural products for use as fingerprinting reagents, and for use to revisualise erased serial numbers.
My other research is in the area of science education. How can people learn and understand science better? Which bleach is better? That takes science understanding to read the label on the bottle at the supermarket. Are the politicians right about a carbon emissions trading scheme? Our society depends on science and technology and on a knowledge of science and technology. So hopefully my research in this area will help you and your teachers create a soceity that understands these issues and can make good decisions.
0