Have you ever thought of research, and what it involves? For me, I used to see research as a scary thing that you can only do if you are some sort of science genius. Sure, I have always found it fascinating, but one of the things dragging me away from research was the idea that scientists would work on abstract concepts, while I have always wanted to see the impact such research can have on the world and on real people.

 What kind of research can you do?

The Blizard Institute in Whitechapel is one of the research institutes that are part of our university. It is a vibrant and modern building, in the heart of East London. You may even notice people walking by and stopping to take a look, wondering what is inside this massive glass building. Hopefully, you will all have the chance to have a look inside, and perhaps even work in the labs for some time! 

Research at Blizard focuses on a few main areas, which include Cell Biology and Cutaneous Research, Immunology, Neuroscience and Trauma, Genomics and Child Health, Primary Care and Public Health, and Population Health Sciences. The Blizard Institute is also home of our wonderful Centre of the Cell, which aims to get children and families closer to science and medicine.

Because of the large variety of topics studied and the great overlap of science and medicine, there are numerous doctors and medical students working alongside scientists in the Blizard Institute. I first started working here for my research project during my last year of Biomedical Science, where I worked within the Centre of Immunology with Prof Foster and his team, which is pioneer in research on hepatitis. I worked on Hepatitis C specifically, extracting the viral genome from patients’ serum and sequencing it, the aim was to find a correlation between mutations that can be found within the genome of the virus and the treatment outcome for patients.

How can you get involved in research?

When looking to get work in a research lab, the best approach is to take a look at the research interests of the principal investigators working in the lab. Once you have found something you may be interest in, it is nice to arrange a meeting - everybody in Blizard is extremely lovely and students are always mostly welcome.

When I started my degree in Medicine, I absolutely loved the course. However, I found myself missing a bit of the pure science happening in labs, therefore I applied for the Rod Flower Summer Research Scholarship, which allows medical students to spend a few weeks during summer working on research. I contacted my supervisor again and found myself back in Blizard. The aims and techniques are similar to before, but related to Hepatitis D instead, a very tiny virus that usually come along with the Hepatitis B virus, causing either a superinfection or a co-infection – either way, it is really bad!

What do you typically do in a lab?

On a day-to-day basis, I get to interact with both scientists and doctors, which I find wonderful! I extremely enjoy seeing the two fields coming together and completing each other. 

The samples have been previously taken from patients’ serum and treated in the category 3 (infectious diseases) labs. Once the virus is inactivated, the samples come down to the category 2 lab, where I work. Hepatitis is caused by an RNA virus; hence this viral genome needs to be extracted from each sample and reverse transcribed to cDNA. I then set up a PCR reaction to amplify the amount of such DNA present in each sample. 

Because we work with incredibly tiny quantities, it is very easy to get contamination, which is why we also include a negative control in every experiment. This contains the reagents and water and should not produce any sort of reaction. 

After the PCR reaction is completed, the amplified samples are stained with a loading dye and loaded into an agarose gel together with a ladder, which helps us identify the size of any bands which we would hopefully get. A good gel would show a nice ladder with many separated bands, representing the different sizes, the negative control would be clear, showing no contamination, and the loaded samples would hopefully show bands of the expected size. If something does not look right, problems might have occurred at any stage during the morning, and everything needs to be done again.

Research is not just science

I learned it a bit of the hard way, but research is not an exact science, like maths. It will teach you the skills surely, but it will also teach you so much more. Teamwork first of all, as I have mentioned. Many people work together in the lab, and all play a key role in the success of the research. Learning the value of time and of resources, without wasting either of them. In the lab, it is required to work with equipment that can cost hundreds to many thousands of pounds, which is why it is always crucial to stay focused and be careful. Finally, above all, research teaches patience. Nowadays, we always expect good results, and we want them there and there. This never happens with research, quite the opposite actually. How many times I have been confident, and failed. How many times you may get results, but they are not statistically significant. Many time I have felt like giving up – in those moments just stop, breath and be patient; take a break perhaps, reflect on what went wrong and will need to be improved within the team, and start again.