• Question: If you could investigate something for a whole year what would it be?

    Asked by Best Mates to Dan, Jennifer, Luke, Martin, sakshisharda on 15 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Sakshi Sharda

      Sakshi Sharda answered on 15 Mar 2018:


      I’m investigating the differences between males and females with respect to their immune system.
      The research that we do usually lasts for more than a year. It takes a while to get experiments running, analyzing data and finally publishing the results. Sometimes experiments don’t work well so we have to re-try them so research is pretty time consuming.

    • Photo: Dan Gordon

      Dan Gordon answered on 15 Mar 2018:


      Actually many of our studies do run for a whole year. So at the moment we are doing a study on blood donation, where each participant has to come to the labs 9 times over a 2 week period. one week before and the second week after donating blood. This study will run for the year to ensure that we get enough participants through.

    • Photo: Jennifer Paxton

      Jennifer Paxton answered on 15 Mar 2018:


      Most of the projects I am running take at least a year (usually longer!) to carry out. The truth is with science is that you can never really say something is finished….often the more you research something the more questions you have to answer! Most projects can continue on and branch out into related areas or questions.
      I’ve been investigating how we can grow new body parts in the lab for about 10 years now and we still have LOTS we want to investigate further.

    • Photo: Luke Williams

      Luke Williams answered on 16 Mar 2018:


      I already have done things for a year or more. I would not mind another year studying bacteria in compost heaps though. That was really interesting – I was trying to get them to make new medicines rather than ethanol (fuel for cars) which is what they were currently used for.

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