• Question: what are your methods of investigation when looking into your chosen field?

    Asked by Bethany to Carolyn, Peter, Richard, Sara, Siana on 12 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Richard Unwin

      Richard Unwin answered on 12 Nov 2015:

      We take tissue or blood samples for people with disease, or animals with a ‘human’ disease, and look for what causes the disease to happen. We do this by taking all of the proteins (things that are made by genes being turned ‘on’ and do the work in the cell), and seeing which proteins are different between the healthy and disease samples using a tool called mass spectrometry. We made a video a year or so ago about how we do this. You can check it out on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7bUrVBNWdsiDFlHivEMT9g

    • Photo: Peter Francis

      Peter Francis answered on 12 Nov 2015:

      We use isokinetic dynamometry to measure the strength of muscles around the knee joint (quadriceps and hamstrings). We do this to see whether peoples strength changes with age, injury or exercise. Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyZMjejQl88
      We also use tensiomyography to measure the speed of muscle contraction for similar reasons. Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fIBH0fEh4w

    • Photo: Siana Jones

      Siana Jones answered on 12 Nov 2015:

      I use a small device that shines near-infrared light into muscle tissue and measures how much comes back. It’s a technique called ‘spectroscopy’ and, after a whole lot of clever maths and assumptions, it tells us how much oxygenated haemoglobin is in the muscle. It measures 10 times every second so you can see what happens when you do different things to the muscle, like cutting off the blood supply with a very tight cuff or exercising to exhaustion.

    • Photo: Sara Falcone

      Sara Falcone answered on 12 Nov 2015:

      I put mice with random unknown mutations in their DNA through tests similar to the ones a person would have during his/her life (blood test, ecg, vision screen, hearing tests, xray). I start when the mice are young and repeat the tests a couple of time at various ages as the mice grow older. If I identify a group of mice that is different (in a positive or negative way) from the others, at the end of their life I collect tissue samples and study their DNA.

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