• Question: What do you find is the most interesting subject in science

    Asked by Whoopie to Christie, Dan, David, Dawn, Sian on 20 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by Izzy-Kate123.
    • Photo: Christie Waddington

      Christie Waddington answered on 20 Jun 2016:

      Human Genetics! I’m fascinated by how a human is coded by DNA, and how well organised the machinery has to be in order to read it, to make the proteins so specifically. If the DNA is wrong, then the proteins aren’t made correctly and you get all the genetic diseases. We are doing some fantastic research in genetics at the moment, especially since we are learning more and more about it. A new technique that is being developed involves gene editing, in which you cut out the mutated bit of DNA and replace it with the correct piece of DNA. This gives us the possibility of one day curing genetic diseases.

      Even simple things like how many genes are needed for hair and eye colour! It is not one gene for each, there are many involved! The same for skin colour. It’s so complicated, and yet it all works together! Amazing!

    • Photo: Dawn Lau

      Dawn Lau answered on 20 Jun 2016:

      Neuroscience – I’m always in awe of how our brain cells can communicate with one another with such complexity. If you ever look at a human brain in detail, you’ll see that the neuronal processes criss-cross each other sooo many times – each time they touch one another that’s one “conversation” that they’re having! And neurons can hold billions of conversations with each other. Somehow, all that noise manages to translate into proper instructions, such as the fact that I’m able to type on this keyboard right now! Equally, because the brain is so complex, when people get brain diseases there’s still so much unknown about how all the brain functions go wrong. There’s so much to learn about the brain, it’s all very exciting!

    • Photo: Sian Thomas

      Sian Thomas answered on 21 Jun 2016:

      Multidisciplinary research where teams of scientists with complementary expertise work together to solve multifaceted problems. As an example – anti microbial resistance. Overcoming this will require input from microbiologists, toxicologists, pharmacists, social scientists, behaviour change experts and probably a host of others – including animal health experts, some from the FSA!

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