• Question: What is the most interesting experiment you've ever done?

    Asked by robertsl07 to Anouk, Chris, Judith, Leisha, Seyyed on 20 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Chris Kettle

      Chris Kettle answered on 20 Jun 2012:

      I looked at how genes are expressed in a centipede’s eggs – thats pretty rock and roll

    • Photo: Anouk Gouvras

      Anouk Gouvras answered on 21 Jun 2012:

      actually I always enjoyed the experiment where you measure which has the most vitamin C, freshly squeezed orange juice, a freshly squeezed orange juice left exposed to air for an hour, a carton of orange juice or a carton of orange juice exposed to air. The answer is always freshly squeezed orange juice and even when it is exposed to air for an hour, half the vitamin C is gone because it has been oxidized. This confirmed why my Dad used to make us down our orange juice every morning. Even now I can not drink orange juice slowly…

    • Photo: Judith Sleeman

      Judith Sleeman answered on 21 Jun 2012:

      I’ll never forget the first real ‘result’ I got as a postdoc. There was a newly found gene from jellyfish called GFP (green fluorescent protein). It makes a protein that glows green if you shine blue light on it. My experiment was to make a fusion of this GFP gene to a human gene for a protein called coilin that lives in tiny dots in the nucleus of the cell called Cajal bodies (although back then we called them coiled bodies). I made the DNA, put it into human cells, looked down the microscope and…..bright green dots in the nucleus! In living cells!!!

      There are fusions of GFP to lots of human proteins now, but at the time no-one had published a fusion of the GFP gene to a human nuclear protein so I was very excited! And to see living human cells glowing green for the first time was really cool.

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