| Ceri Harrop Blog Entry |
Personal Profile
Name: Ceri Harrop Education: School: Christleton High School in Chester A-levels: Biology (B), Chemistry (B), General Studies (A). A/S levels: Maths (B), French (A). B.Sc. Biomedical Science with Industrial Experience (2.1)
Date: 20th March 2007 Title: Back to the lab! Well, after a hectic week last week with loads of great events on to celebrate National Science and Engineering Week, I am back to normality….that is if you can call what I do everyday “normal”!I work on respiratory illnesses like asthma and Cystic Fibrosis, and our research group specifically look at the properties of mucus (that’s slime to you and me!) in the airways and how that affects how people breathe. So yesterday I fed all the cells I am growing at the moment. The cells are taken from airways of people and grown in special conditions. The cells are capable of changing into to cells we find in our airways. They have little hairs on them called cilia and even make their own mucus. I collect samples from the cells and test the properties of what they are making to see what is happening in health and disease. We use cells taken from patients, as it is almost impossible to do this on whole people! Some patients supply samples for studies, which is very good of them, and it means to can get a real insight into what is happening in different illnesses and in different people. So today I am looking at some of the samples I’ve been collecting, and measuring what proteins are in the sample and how much I have. Comparing this to a different set of cells, taken from someone else, will help us see what is happening in airways disease. It is amazing to think that something I might discover could go on to help people with asthma, Cystic Fibrosis or other respiratory illnesses in the future. Sometimes things don’t work and experiments have to be repeated, which can get a bit frustrating, but when you look at what you are doing and the importance of it, it does help make everything seem worthwhile. Another thing that is great about what I do is that time is pretty flexible. Last week I was in the lab for only a couple of hours each day as we had groups of students in to take part in a science and design event we were running. It was great, and we spent the days learning all about different illnesses, and the research that goes on to understand diseases better, and then made models of what we’d all learnt to present back to the rest of the groups. So yes, there are loads of opportunities to take part in activities outside the lab too, and teaching people about what you do is lots of fun. It’s nice to have a job which in interesting, and important, and most of all, fun! No day is the same as another and being flexible and good at time management is something you have to learn! |
