• Question: What piece of scientific knowledge to you find most interesting?

    Asked by joejericho to Andrew, Emma, Marianne on 16 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      There was a chap called ilya metchnikoff (Nobel prize in 1908)who was amazing with a microscope. He was the first to see white blood cells eating each other (Phagocytosis) as a normal body process (weird isn’t it). See videos of it here(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpOxgAU5fFQ&feature=player_embedded and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trFKvJT57Vc ). I do this experiment now with a much fancier microscope, lasers, fluorescent dyes and antibodies and take videos of it.

      This is fascinating to me because we are trying to influence this process (which was discovered a 100 years ago) with drugs to make human diseases better.

    • Photo: Andrew Maynard

      Andrew Maynard answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Hi joejericho,

      Great question, and I’m struggling to find an answer! So I’m going to tell you about something I’m finding really interesting at the moment – and that’s the work that was released recently on creating a synthetic cell.

      You might have read about this, but a group of scientists did something really clever – they decoded the complete genetic code of a bacterium and read it into a computer. Then they added bits of their own code on the computer – in this case it was just sequences in the DNA that said the equivalent of “made by Craig Venter” – it was Craig Venter’s team that did the work. Finally, they used the information on the computer to construct a new genome out of laboratory chemicals, and “downloaded” it into a bacterial cell, which proceeded to grow and divide.

      And this is what I find really incredible with this work – it marks the beginning of being able to play around with genetic code on the computer – like you might with digital photos or CGI in movies – then down-load it back into real life!

      Now that’s interesting!

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Hi joejericho…in my Masters degree I learnt that glaciers that sit over an area of volcanic activity can spontaneously explode from the heat and pressure of the volcano underneath it. The icelandic term for it is jokulhlaup and I thought it was such a good name, I nearly named my cat after it (sad scientist I know):).

    • Photo: Marianne Baker

      Marianne Baker answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Wow that’s a tough one.

      In the whole of science, ever?!

      Most *interesting*, not most important…

      I think it has to be evolution actually (though I’ve only spent a couple of minutes thinking!).

      It’s amazing to look around and think about where everything’s come from. The thoughts and hard work of people who started the hypothesis and then those who followed it up, down to everyone today still building on the knowledge… I can never find it at all boring.

      A revolutionary concept, still (strangely/annoyingly) not accepted and even villified by some.
      But beautifully elegant and intriguing.

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