• Question: What is the coolest thing about your work/research?

    Asked by anon-241335 to Ross, Natalia, Martin, Gabriela, Ellie, Chukwuka on 17 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Martin Johnsson

      Martin Johnsson answered on 17 Mar 2020:

      Oh. Something that I perceive as cool, or something that other people might agree with me about? Haha.

      I think genetics in itself is inherently cool. There is something fascinating about how on the one hand, we know so much about DNA, have genome sequences for all these different species, and a lot of theory that helps describe how it works … And on the other hand, we know almost nothing. We can “read” the “text” that is the DNA, but we can’t understand what most of it means. I like the idea that I make a (small) contribution to that.

      Also, chickens are cool.

    • Photo: Gabriela da Silva Xavier

      Gabriela da Silva Xavier answered on 18 Mar 2020:

      Seeing something unexpected/other people have not observed before. In one of my current projects I am looking at a protein that is potentially a fuel sensor. We have some mice in which this fuel sensor is defective and I wondered if that could have an impact on how these mice feed- they were fatter than “normal” mice which had a properly functioning fuel sensor. So I set up an experiment where I measured and compared food intake and energy expenditure between the two and the short of it is that the mice without the properly functioning fuel sensor do have a different feeding pattern- they eat more, they eat when “normal” mice would normally be sleeping, and they move less. The data was pretty cool and that was a good day in the office.

    • Photo: Eleanor Spence

      Eleanor Spence answered on 19 Mar 2020:

      Personally, the coolest thing about my research is the chance to share research findings with other people. I have come to find over the years that I am actually very extroverted (despite sometimes feeling the opposite) and I get a real buzz over discussing science with anyone! There are so many opportunities to travel to beautiful places and talk science. And although this is not really an option at the moment, there are plenty of other places to ask questions and discuss – like twitter or here!

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