• Question: what is the most interesting discovery you haver ever made?

    Asked by elifisikgun to Cat, Daz, Holly, Johnson, Pamela on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by u27westa.
    • Photo: Cat O'Connor

      Cat O'Connor answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hi Elifisikgun, Great to hear from you again!
      Hi u27westa!

      I’m going to hope that I have yet to make my greatest discovery! I think my greatest discovery so far is some work I did showing why badger culling have different effects on bovine tb in Ireland and Great Britain! But i’m going to aim high and hope that my greatest discovery is going to be figuring out if badgers and cattle are more responsible for bovine tb in Great Britain. But you’ll have to wait a little while to see if i’m successful!!

      I hope this answers your question!

      Cat

    • Photo: Pamela Lithgow

      Pamela Lithgow answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi elifisikgun and u27westa,
      Hmmmm….I haven’t really discovered much yet. The more you do in science the more you realise that there is actually not that many “discoveries” made by just one person. It is more a gradual change in understanding. I get excited when my work “shows” something interesting.
      But one of the most interesting things I have ever “shown” was that something wasn’t how people thought it was. They thought the virus got into cells using a thing on the outside of the cells to grab onto (a receptor) but my work PROVED that this was not the case.
      So not really a big discovery but to me it was important and it is a small step towards bigger discoveries!
      Hope this answers your question
      Pam 🙂

    • Photo: Darren Braddick

      Darren Braddick answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi Elifisikgun and Westa!

      Well, I like to think that I have yet to even make that super discovery too. I’ve found a few things but nothing quite so great. Like Pam said, a lot of what you find is smaller and not very sudden, especially when you are one person working on an area. But, I certainly hope to find something soon!

      I’ll tell you one of the smaller discoveries though – I do a lot of work with fluorescence, which looks very cool and is highly sensitive to environment. If you change your fluorescent compound (called a fluorophore) or various things near it, you can change it’s colour.. So my discovery was that when I use these fluorophores in my experiments, I can tell if they work or not, because everything they attach to shines a bright green light! That’s not really a new discovery, but it is in my work…

      Hope that helps,

      Daz

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