Today was the last day! :( And today was also the day of truth – had our experiments worked?

The morning started off quite quietly. All my ocd-ishness (why yes, I do colour-code my revision notes, why do you ask) was satisfied when Alan and I helped to sort out and organize Jenny’s old experiment slides into numerical order, and then arrange them snugly in a cardboard box to go into the cold room.

I got to interview Jenny for my project on cancer, and asked her about current treatments and about the mechanisms involved when a cell becomes cancerous. It was really fun, and we filmed the interview on her Flip HD. It was the first time I’d ever done an interview about science, and even after this great week we’ve had I have to admit I was a bit nervous about trying to be coherent on tape!

Then in the afternoon it was time to go down to the confocal microscope and see our results! First we looked at the controls, and as we expected we saw they were normal, round, healthy, happy looking cells. And then we moved on to the gene knockdown cells. My cells had gone all spiky! (Though not as spiky as Tweet and Spike, mind you). They were full of stress lines and had got really big. It was an exciting moment! We took lots of photos and a few stacks too. Jenny said my results were quite interesting, so I hope I was able to make some tiny contribution to her research (and of course if she wins the Nobel Prize I expect a mention! ;) )

Overall I have to say that I’ve enjoyed my week here more than I know how to explain – it’s been an amazing opportunity to see and try techniques and use professional equipment, working under real lab conditions and learning so much from Jenny. It’s confirmed everything I thought about wanting to study science and become a scientist. Jenny’s enthusiasm for her work also really inspired me to work hard and do well, to achieve as much as I can and find projects to explore with just that kind of enthusiasm too.

Thank you Jenny for such a totally completely awesome and fantastic week! :)