Question: is there alot of complex things within your work?

Darren Braddick answered on 16 Jun 2011:

Hello 19claire95,

Yes, most of it is complex. I could go into many reasons why, but I will share the main one. My work is to try and measure the work of some proteins from several bacteria. These proteins unfortunately do not dissolve in water, as they are found in the membranes of the bacterial cells. The membrane is a fatty layer which separates the cell insides from the outside.

If you consider water, many substances dissolve in water – like sugar or salt. The reason they do is because water is hydrophilic – which is a science word for things which ‘like’ water – hydro means water, philic means love, so they ‘love water’ and will therefore dissolve into it.

The fatty membrane, however, is fatty, and does not dissolve in water. It is hydrophobic, which again, this means water-phobic, phobic is related to the word -phobia, or ‘fear’! The membrane hates water!

So, my proteins are in this membrane. To therefore get them, I cannot use water to remove them, as they will collapse together and not work at all. I need to use detergents – which are actually not too different to detergents used for washing up. Both detergents work the same way – they dissolve fat and things that are hydrophobic, which is why they help dissolve grease and fat from food!

The use of these detergents in science, however, can be tricky. The proteins you want to use can be very sensitive to their environment, and need careful treatment as they are very weak and can ‘break’ easily, and will not work anymore. For this reason, it can be very complex to work with, because of how sensitive it is, and how careful you must be with them.

I fear my answer has become an essay, so I will stop there. Please let me know if I can answer anything else you wonder about,

Daz