As this is my first blog, I think it’s vital to add a personal touch before we delve into the wonderful, often frustrating journey of a young, female scientist. I have just begun my Honours year which has been disrupted by a viral pandemic, that, in all honesty, was predicted by one of my lecturers. But before that hit, this grueling, yet delightfully rewarding course taught us some fascinating techniques. Finally, theory was put into practice. Yes, as novice scientists, this was a thrilling experience, even though these techniques have been around for years and mastered by many.So, if you dare to be left in awe, take a moment with me to step back and marvel at how science is changing the game.
Some of our first experiments involved cloning and ligation. Before you sink into your chair at the sight of the words ‘ligation’ and ‘cloning’, let me simplify, and in the process, blow your mind. So, all organisms have these molecules connected together in a specific order to form strands of code that essentially make up that organism. This is called DNA and these ordered codes are called genes. In bacteria, there are extra strands of DNA that give that bacterium a special advantage known as plasmids. Now imagine there is code for a protein that glows in the dark and you want to take that code and insert in somewhere else, perhaps another organism to make that express this glowing protein. This is the basic process of cloning and ligation. Scientists through the years have spent their time, over multiple failed experiments and successes, to carefully construct a method to this. They have come up with ways to physically cut out a piece of information from one organism, and cut open a gap in another organism at specific sites in the DNA. And, wait for it, they are able to stick that piece of DNA into the opened gap. How amazing is this, especially when you consider this is essentially what makes up the organisms! Track back before 1972 when the first recombinant DNA molecules were produced, people would have thought this to be impossible and only an idea born out of the consumption of hallucinogens.
Another truly fascinating experiment we ran was stimulating cells from a human cancer cell line. For some background, these are cervical cancer cells from a woman named Hendrietta Lacks whose cervical cancer cells were extracted, cloned and sent to different labs all around the world in the 1950s. Yes, we had the chance to work directly with cells that from over 50 years ago. Of course, these weren’t the original cells but generations later of cells derived from them. To go even further, these cells have receptors on their edges and when stimulated, will cause downstream changes inside the cells. And this is exactly what we did. We removed these from the base they were growing on(which was not in human medium but rather a specialized plastic medium constructed for this purpose), grew them for a few days in media and added chemicals that mimic the ones in the body to these cells to measure the changes produced. We grew human cells outside the human body!
These are just two experiments we have conducted. To upcoming and experienced scientists these may just come across as simple tools that have been developed to conduct research. But if we take that step back, the sheer idea of conducting such experiments was unheard of a few years ago. This only adds to idea of a fast-paced, rapidly changing and innovative field science is. And to think this is just the beginning of journey.I hope to share with you my awe-inspiring journey as a young scientist with you , and hopefully give you an idea of how cool the work we do is and how science impacts your life without you even noticing. What a time to be alive and a scientist!
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