Meet the scientists!

I am a post-doctoral research scientist working in a research group in a University. This means I have a PhD which I studied for after my degree. The good news is a get to call myself a Dr!!. In the group there are 4 post-docs, 6 PhD students and one research techincan who helps us all out with our experiments. We all have our research projects and our group looks at the flu virus. I am currently working on two projects. The flu virus can infect humans, birds, pigs, horses, dogs, tigers, seals and many more animals but they are all slightly different. My first question is to understand what changes a bird flu virus might need to make in order to infect humans. If we know the answer to this then we can watch out for the bird viruses and make predictions about which viruses may cause human disease in the future. When you catch human flu, you are generally sick for bout a week but then most people get better. However when a human catches a bird flu most people die. So my second question is to understand the differences inside the human cell when infected with a human flu virus and a bird flu virus.

The best thing about being a scientist is that everyday is different but the one thing that they have in common is that they are all busy. Sometimes I even have to work weekends as once an experiment starts it can’t just stop for a weekend (the virus does not know it’s a Saturday!!). Most of my day will be spent in the lab doing experiments. We have two separate labs; one where we do experiments with cells and viruses and one lab where we look at the DNA or RNA or proteins of those infected cells. Sometimes I am working with animals too. The ferret is a very good animal to study human flu in as the ferrets get sick like humans but recover as well. So some days I am collecting snot from ferrets and checking their temperatures. Part of my day always involves recording my experiments in a lab book (a scientist’s diary) this lets me look back at what I have done before and improve the experiments for next time. I spend sometime catching up on the latest flu news online by reading journals and surfing the internet for flu news. Also part of my day will involve talking and meeting with colleagues to discuss results and what we are going to try next!