Question: Why do you want to investigate white blood cells in particular?

Tom Speight answered on 7 Nov 2017:

I think the white blood cell that I investigate (alveolar macrophage) is particularly important. These guys are the very first white blood cells to come across anything dangerous you can breathe in. Bacteria, Viruses, or just particles you can breathe in from dirty air like smoke. It’s the job of the alveolar macrophage to act as a kind of Pac-Man and eat up all this bad stuff. If it doesn’t get eaten, they’re free to damage your lungs and make it harder to breathe. Alveolar macrophages also send out a message to other white blood cells to come and join the fight to get rid of the bad stuff if there’s a lot of it. So they’re really important in coordinating different parts of your immune system to keep the lung healthy.
There’s a lot of very sick patients in intensive care of hospitals that really struggle to keep their lungs working. I want to investigate those white blood cells because I may find a way to help those sick patient’s get better sooner!