• Question: What has been the most amazing experiment?

    Asked by Elicabanas to Tom, Paul, Natasha, Ildiko, Ester, Eoin on 9 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Ester Gil Vazquez

      Ester Gil Vazquez answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      I don’t think it really is the most amazing, but it is the one that I enjoyed most (also because I was young and hadn’t done much science yet!). I used a virus to kill cells. I know, I know! viruses are bad. However, we can manipulated them: change their parts like when you tune a car. By doing so, they become safe and able to only attack cancer cells. Isn’t it cool? I used a virus like that to infect cancer cells in a plate and watch how they died day by day. These type of therapies are being developed in different laboratories and are actually approved in some countries for the treatment of some cancers…but they are not the most common ones.

    • Photo: Paul McKeegan

      Paul McKeegan answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      I’m a simple man. You can’t beat a screaming jelly baby!

      In my PhD, I once did a very minor, off the cuff experiment when nothing else was working. I tried to block fat metabolism on some embryos to see what happened. In the end, this completely changed the embryo’s biochemistry, but the embryos didn’t look or grow any different. This led to over 2 years of experiments and most of my PhD!

    • Photo: Natasha Myhill

      Natasha Myhill answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      The best experiment I have done was one where I tried to make a drug-resistant line of breast cancer in the lab so that we could study it more. I used a really cool new technique called CRISPR make a tiny change in the DNA of the cells and even though it was a really tricky technique, I got lucky and it worked first time! 🙂

    • Photo: Ildiko Somorjai

      Ildiko Somorjai answered on 10 Nov 2017:

      I´m pretty sure this is not the most amazing experiment out there, but it certainly was exciting for me! I remember most when I did the “secret experiments” that proved (to me) that my little amphioxus could regenerate their whole tails including their spinal cords. Everyone told me it was impossible and that everyone had tried it so not to bother….and here I had proof that they really did regenerate! I had to be really patient and do everything perfectly-and repeat it a few times-so that both I and my supervisor were convinced. I waited until I was totally sure before I told him. THAT is the joy of science: discovering something new (even if small) for yourself.

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