Month: June 2013

Biosamples and Babies

Warning: Not for the faint-hearted

In our group we are mainly working with different human and animal biosamples including blood and urine. What you might not know is that for the lucky(?!) few we have stool samples to work on too! Now I know what you are thinking, you’re a little disgusted…I was thinking the same at first but I’m actually really lucky as my project revolves around babies and baby stool just seems less gross…right?

I studied microbiology for my undergraduate degree and have been interested in gut microbiota ever since. I think it’s a fascinating subject which I used to try to talk to my non-scientific friends about but they always looked massively awkward…Thankfully I have many scientists to talk to at IC and medic student housemates who don’t even blink an eye!

Pushing on

“Don’t blink or you will miss it”

it became obvious when were told we needed to submit an Early Stage Assessment as we were 9 month into our PhD…

I can remember our Research Proposal, the Stratigrad meeting and even posters and conferences for some of us, but 9 months seems like a lot!

Happily things got faster in the last 3 months as we got more experienced with NMR and MassSpec sample acquisition, data preprocessing and other software needed for our respective projects: the data started flowing in.

More data meant also more and more time in front of the computer to make sense of it, and that’s when our secret weapon came handy…

Tea or Coffee 1 or 5 First thing in the morning before any verbal communication or Last trick to get a bit more out of the day

we all have our much needed styles and habits…

Recently a very good friend about to start his PhD told me how optimistic he is, but said it might change in a year and cited this PhDcomic which – in truth – is spot on.

High-Octane Science

My turn again eh? I really can’t believe it’s been over 2 months since the last blog post I did. The time has really flown by, with all the experiments blurring into one and every paper I read just starting to jumble around in my head like alphabet soup. The funder’s meeting came and went, and now we’re all working on our 9 month early stage reviews, something I’m sure the other Stratigrad students are looking forward to as much as I am…

I’m spending more and more time over at the IRDB building at Hammersmith Hospital, where I’ve been carrying out all of my tissue culture work.