Meet the scientists!

All of the cells that make up our bodies communicate with each other so that it all works together – at least when we are healthy. In fact, there are about 10 trillion cells in a human adult (that’s about 10,000 times more cells in each of us than there are people on the planet) and so we could imagine these discussions between cells as a ginormous Facebook network with groups of cells talking with each other. We don’t understand most of these messages and so I want to decode them so that I can understand what happens when things go wrong, for example when we get diseases. If we can do this, we might be able to correct it and provide cures and treatments.

You can think of scientists all around the globe working towards solutions to some of the major problems that confront us in our world today. Therefore, I spend a lot of time talking with scientists (usually by email or Skype) from other countries. My day starts with reading and answering emails that have come in overnight from scientists in other countires, usually America and Australia.

Scientists usually work in small groups and so I also spend a lot of time discussing with the people in my team about the puzzles and problems that  we need to solve to find the answers to our questions.

I also need to keep up-to-date with what other scientists around the world have been doing so I spend a lot of time reading and thinking and out what others have done.

We access many of the web sites around the world created by other scientists to help us with our research. We often use the genome sequence of the parasite that casues malaria, human beings and the laboratory mouse.