Meet the scientists!

In my research group we use zebrafish to understand which roles genes play in making a functioning body.  We look at zebrafish mutants  that have lost the function of some genes and check which bits of the body or behaviour change because of the lost gene. For example, if the gene for the muscle protein dystrophin is broken the fish can’t swim properly anymore because the muscle tissue tears. The same gene is affected in people suffering fromthe inherited muscle disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy. We hope that the zebrafish mutants will help us to understand the disease better.

My day normally starts with reading and answering emails. Afterwards I do a quick literature search for new publications in my field of research.  Then I either do some experiments or work more on the computer. In the lab I’m working on  in vitro fertilisation using frozen sperm. At the computer I’m creating a database with our bioinformatics people that can hold all the information about our experiments. Then I have lunch. In the afternoons I often have  meetings with my group to discuss experiments and decide what to do next. I’m not very good at remembering things, so the rest of my day is spent writing down everything I’ve done and thought about. Then I do a a last check of my emails and talk a bit more with my colleagues. My project depends on lots of people working together and sharing their ideas, so what might look like a bunch of people just chatting is actually important work!

The zebrafish genome is only one of three genomes that are being sequenced in very fine detail. The other two are human and mouse. The sequence of the zebrafish genome shows us that zebrafish genes are very similar to human genes in general, even the order in which they sit on the chromosomes is often the same. However, there are also differences and it really helps to know about the differences as well as the similarities. For example, for many genes zebrafish have two versions where humans have only one. It is important that we look a the correct version of the zebrafish gene if we want to find out what the gene does in humans.