• Question: Whats the most exciting/fascinating experiment that you have ever done?

    Asked by to Sergey, Claire, Ian, Vicky, Zena on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by , , , , , , , .
    • Photo: Sergey Lamzin

      Sergey Lamzin answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      I mixed nitroglycerin at some point.
      The explosion was worthy of the name!
      It’s surprisingly good at chopping down trees.

      Please don’t repeat that. It was exciting, but it can also be deadly.
      I still have all my fingers. For now…

    • Photo: Vicky Schneider

      Vicky Schneider answered on 18 Jun 2014:

      I used to work with butterflies and birds on understanding how the selective pressures from birds predating butterflies might had influence the way these look. In other words, are eyespots an effective mechanism for the butterflies to deviate the birds to less vital zones (a piece of wing) than their main body and so on…This meant I had to raise birds and collect butterflies from specific regions etc…since I was also studying if birds were born with knowledge about which butterflies to avoid according to the butterflies colour patter etc (mimicry…aposematic colours etc)

    • Photo: Claire Shooter

      Claire Shooter answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      I added new genes into brain cells and then made the ones which expressed the new gene glow in UV light!

    • Photo: Ian Simpson

      Ian Simpson answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      I think the most exciting experiment I have done was actually a small part of a much bigger project. I was developing stem cell culture techniques and one of the experiments I did to check the cells were still able to produce many different kinds of cells was to direct them to change into different types of cells (called cellular differentiation).

      In this particular experiment I induced the cells to become cardiomyocytes (primitive heart cells). They did so and were growing beautifully, then one day I was looking at them down the microscope and they started beating. That made me jump of my chair 😯 These cells spontaneously organise into a sheet that has a basic AV node (this is the patch on your heart that starts the beat) and they start to beat. Very freaky indeed 😀

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