Research

Can you briefly describe your research area?
I work on yeast, a very simple single-celled organism but with many characteristics that you find in more complicated organisms like human beings.
I identify the genes important in controlling:
cell division and reproduction;
the many different shapes of cells and the processes that control that.
We treat yeast cells with chemicals that damage the DNA then see how damaged genes affect how yeast cells divide or take on a certain shapes. I can then find out what the genes do. We clone the genes by isolating their DNA. We sequence them then investigate how they work and how these genes work together to produce a cell that can divide, or a particular shaped cell.

What do the different members of your team do?
The 12 people in my research team each have a particular project, a biological problem like How does a cell divide? How does it determine its shape? They study that in depth, using every necessary technique and process. They have to learn all the different techniques, but they are committed and come up with imaginative solutions to problems.

How do members of your team come up with new ideas?
Getting good ideas is the most difficult part of science. I try to encourage it by giving people personal responsibility for their own project. A good way of coming up with new ideas is by talking. Everybody has slightly different ways of looking at things. Talking to different people is a good way of finding new ideas and new ways of thinking about things. Someone new in the lab can bring fresh ways of thinking. You can also get ideas from other interests, making connections from other things. Don’t be too focussed, be receptive.

What qualities are needed to solve a scientific problem?
complete commitment
complete honesty
You start by making very careful, reliable observations. You repeat them to ensure that it’s a proper observation which can be relied upon, and not a mistake. You need to make sure that any investigation is properly controlled. Then, you are more confident that what you observe is actually due to the particular treatment you’re giving.
Using properly controlled experiments scientists try to come up with an idea or hypothesis which might explain that set of phenomena. From this you can usually make other predictions which you can test by devising new experiments.
Sometimes your hypothesis fails so you then have to look for a new one. Sometimes your explanation looks correct. Science can easily disprove a hypothesis, but it’s not easy to prove a hypothesis because you never know if there’s an experiment which would disprove it.

What do you do if your experiment doesn’t work?
Be resilient. Experiments at the cutting edge of knowledge often fail. Often it’s a technical problem and you’ll get it right if you just do it again more carefully.
Sometimes you have to separate each bit of the experiment to get each different part of it working. Another scientist may have solved this problem already. You can write or phone for advice or even use their lab or chemicals/solutions. It’s very co-operative.

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