Profile

One of the problems with illnesses like Alzheimer’s is that the brain cells aren’t as good at repairing themselves as other bits of your body so the disease is difficult to treat. The same problem is seen when people break their spines and are paralysed for life. We want to find a way of making these cells become like other body cells for a short while, letting them fix themselves, then they can go back to doing their normal job in the body.
Research costs lots of money and so we are given money by the Royal British Legion, the charity that sell poppies to help injured soldiers.
To do this job I grow lots of small dishes of different types of cells, such as nerve cells. Sometimes I simulate the blast of an explosion on these cells and see how this changes the way that the cell works.
I spend lots of time in the lab and am really busy. I sometimes wish that I could clone myself to help do all the work. Then I would have more time to read up on what other scientists were doing and try and get ideas. My friends have just told me that one of me is enough, but here is what I reckon it would be like if I did clone myself.

When doing these experiments I spend quite a lot of time using microscopes. Some of the microscopes are very futuristic looking, with lasers that allow you to take a really detailed 3D picture of cells much much smaller than this full stop.
The picture here shows some cells (the blue bit is their nucleus, like the brain of the cell). The little white ruler in the bottom right shows how big the cells are. This ruler is 50 micrometers long. One micrometer is one thousandth of a single millimeter, or one millionth of a meter! (This image is actually in 3D on my computer and I can twist it all over the place to see right around each cell, but   sadly I can’t put that on here for you.)

We can look at the details of the cells using special dyes that recognise certain bits of cells. A bit like how some hair dyes can target only the grey hairs. This picture (my favourite) shows the tiny skeleton of the cell. Can you see all the thin red lines? They are called actin filaments and do some of the same jobs that our bones do. We use this dye to see what changes happen to the cell shape.

For the most part I really enjoy my work. Particularly when I’m doing a brand new experiment. The worst part of the job is when things go wrong. Especially if you have spent weeks working on that experiment.

So my daily routine. I wake up far to early 🙁 Take the train to London and then dodge buses as I bike 7 miles to work. When I’m on the train I usually plan what experiments I’m going to do based on what I found out the day before.
We have a lot of fun in the labs and we are always laughing and joking which makes work more enjoyable. Here is a picture of the desk from the girl who sits next to me. It was her birthday so we wrapped everything up as a present.

I start work at 9 and work till 6. About half this time I spend in the lab doing experiments. Sometimes at my bench, sometimes in the microscope room and sometimes in a room where I look after lots of dishes of cells that we need for our experiments.
Here is a picture of me looking after these cells.

Certain experiments can be quite long but I usually have my iPod on when I’m in the lab. The problem with having my headphones in is that I often forget where I am and start dancing. Our labs have glass windows so I put on a nice little show without realising. The last part of my day is spent writing up the different experiments that I did that day and what I found out. This is probably the most important bit of being a scientist and I try and do some of this each day. I also use this part of the day to write any reports or presentations, as scientists always share their discoveries so that other people can add to them. At the end of the day I cycle back to my train and go home.