• Question: what sort of tests do you do? which are your favourite?

    Asked by coconut to Glo, Clare, Dave, Ozge, Sean on 16 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by chloemack98.
    • Photo: Gloeta Massie

      Gloeta Massie answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Well, I’m taking my driving test on Friday – what with driving on the left side of the road, when I’m from the US – that could be scary! And I’m taking a test to get a license to drive a boat in a few weeks, which has different signals yet again! But, somehow, coconut, I don’t think that’s what you mean. 🙂 In terms of my research, to name a few, I do DNA extractions (FUN!), RNA extractions (FUN, but slightly more stressful – ok – a lot more stressful!), protein extractions (fun, yet more stress), and behavioral experiments (FUN!!!). Judging by the !!! I’d say the live animals stuff is probably my fave. 🙂

    • Photo: Dave Sproson

      Dave Sproson answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I tend to use really large sets of data (for example we measure all 3 directions of the wind 20 times per second, some times for months) so most of the test that I do tend to be statistical in nature, and are done by computer.

      One of my favourite ways to find things out though, is to run a massive simulation of the ocean in a supercomputer, and then use the results of the simulation to infer what is probably happening in the real ocean. It still amazes me that we can do that with a bit of maths and a computer!

    • Photo: Clare Woulds

      Clare Woulds answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I add chemical labels to sediment samples to track the cycling of carbon. My favourite ones are the ones in really interesting and different marine environments, like hydrothermal vents, where the carbon cycling is likely to be strange, and where i am going to be one of the first people to find out about it.

    • Photo: Ozge Ozkaya

      Ozge Ozkaya answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      At the beggining of my project the first thing I had to do was to identify new krll genes. At the time nobody knew anything about krill genes What I had to do was to “fish out” krill genes using a technique called degenerate PCR. Basically you look at the amino acid sequence of your protein of interest in as many species as possible and try to identify conserved regions (Proteins are made of amino acids and these are encoded by the DNA). If the same sequence occurs in all animals you look at, from flies to humans it is likely that it will also be the same in krill. You then try to amplify the DNA that is encoding for that amino acid sequence. The genetic code is made of 4 letters A, T, G and C. These always make 3 letter words for instance ATG=methionine (which is one amino acid) These then come together to make sentences ATG CCG CGA for example = methionine proline arginine etc and that will be your protein. But there is a complication, sometimes different letter triplets (codons) encode for the same amino acid, so by looking at the amino acid sequence of a protein you can’t be sure of the DNA sequence. Is this becoming too complicated? Probably! Anyway this way you can identify the sequence of new genes as I did for the krill.

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