• Question: What types of discoveries have you made and which one was the most rewarding?

    Asked by anon-251308 on 21 Apr 2020. This question was also asked by anon-253449, anon-253015.
    • Photo: Paige Chandler

      Paige Chandler answered on 21 Apr 2020:

      I’m still very early in my research career, since I’m a PhD student. However, I have mice that have a genetic mutation that has been linked to schizophrenia in humans – and I was very excited to find that these mice had issues in processing sound. It was totally different as to what we were expecting from these mice! It’s opened up a lot of really interesting questions for us.

    • Photo: Donna MacCallum

      Donna MacCallum answered on 21 Apr 2020:

      One of my favourite discoveries was that not all strains of my favourite fungus are able to cause disease to the same extent. Most people generalise based upon one single strain or isolate, but they are all different – some quickly kill a host and some would never manage to kill a host… fascinating!!!

    • Photo: Varun Ramaswamy

      Varun Ramaswamy answered on 21 Apr 2020:

      Ah, nice question 🙂 I am trying to find the 3D shape of a protein that looks like it has 2 little legs and one long, thin body and it literally hops inside our cells to travel around!

      It really is the most adorable thing ever but we were all quite confused about how this tiny thing is able to take a leap without getting pushed out of its path.

      But recently, I started solving the puzzle of its shape and discovered that it has a little hook at the top of its body! So now we all realised that it uses this hook to hold on to something above it while it hops, to save itself from getting pushed away.
      My boss and I were quite excited at this discovery 🙂

    • Photo: Freya Harrison

      Freya Harrison answered on 22 Apr 2020:

      A few years ago my colleagues and I tried making a medieval treatment for eye infection from a historical medical book, and we found that it seems to really work! We think that in this recipe, which is made from two different plants, wine, and bile from a a cow’s gallbladder, there is a particular mix of natural compounds that make a really lethal cocktail for bacteria. We are working hard to find out what this is, if it could work in real human infections, and it it would be safe.
      So far, we know that it works in animal infections, that it doesn’t cause a lot of damage to human cells, and that it doesn’t harm mice if we put it on their skin. This year we planned to start safety tests with human volunteers – that’s delayed because of COVID-19 but hopefully we can start again soon. We think that we might be able make a specific mix of compounds based on this mixture which could be added to ointments or bandages to treat the infected ulcers that people with diabetes can get on their feet and legs.
      Being realistic, most potential antibiotics that look good in the lab ultimately don’t work on people, so the chances that we will really develop something from this are slim. But they are not zero, and the thought that we might just make something that’s useful to people is really exciting!

Comments

  • Photo: Tom

    Tom commented on :

    I’m an engineer rather than a scientist, so I invent rather than discover! The coolest thing I have worked on (that I am allowed to tell you about) is a smart water bottle that mixes squash directly into the water in the bottle.