• Question: What is an example of an experiment you have done, and what was the result?

    Asked by rbashforth to Chris, Michelle, Alberto, Jennie, Emmanuel on 19 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by lexystraw, tararuby00, iso2, attws007, leesundonaldson, ej9147.
    • Photo: Chris Whittle

      Chris Whittle answered on 19 Jun 2013:

      One experiment I do quite a lot is extracting cells from the placenta and growing them in the lab. I then try to stop certain genes from working by switching them off with what we call an ‘inhibitor’ to see what the effects are on the cells.

    • Photo: Michelle Taylor

      Michelle Taylor answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      I once did an experiment with a small species of freshwater fish called a Rainbowfish in Australia. I paired up males and females in lots of fish tanks and I wanted to watch their behaviour and collect any eggs they produced to see how much their offspring would look like their parents. Unfortunately these fish did not like having only one other fish for company as they are a shoaling species that live in a large group in small ponds. They started attacking each other and I had to stop my experiment and put them all back together in a big pool of water! Just goes to show that we can’t always do what we want with living things and must respect their natural biology.

    • Photo: Emmanuel Amabebe

      Emmanuel Amabebe answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      We have tested The relationship between thirst perception and and a hormone called antidiuretic hormone (ADH) in humans and we discovered thirst perception can be calculated from plasma ADH concentration and/or plasma osmolality.

    • Photo: Alberto Lapedriza

      Alberto Lapedriza answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      The experiment that I do most frequently is to detect the genes that are on or off in different stages of the zebrafish embryo development. You can see how a gene is off at earlier stages and then it turns on or the other way round.

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