Profile

My Work
Every single one of your cells is covered in sugar molecules that can provide clues about how well the cell is doing. In particular I look at a type of blood cell called a lymphocyte, and how its sugar changes as it dies. The type of lymphocyte I am interested in is an important part of your immune system, that produces special proteins that help to destroy invading viruses and bacteria. As these cells die, they lose their outmost sugars, and that lets other cells of the immune system see that they are dying and removes them from our bodies.

My work involves growing these cells in flasks, killing them, and then looking for the changes in the sugars using sugar-binding-proteins and a device called a flow cytometer.  The sugar-binding proteins recognise different types of sugars on the cells surface, so by using specific proteins I can look for particular sugars. There’s a dye attached to the protein, so when it sticks to the cell we can detect that using either a microscope or my favourite machine, the flow cytometer. The flow cytometer is a device that allows you to pass thousands of cells, one by one, past a laser and detect if the protein-dye is attached. I collect thousands of cellsworth of information and try to interpret it.
Me
I’m from Cork, and I’ve been living in Dublin for six years. I’ve a BSc. in Biomedical Science, a Masters in Biomedical Diagnostics, and I started my PhD in 2011.  In my spare time I do plenty of crochet, knitting and machine sewing.  I use Linux on my laptop and do little bits of programming here and there. I’m an active member of TOG, the Dublin Hackerspace, where I turn up to the craftnight and help out on various projects such as the fabric cadaver and the twitter knitter.  Me, wrestling the intestines of a prototype cadaver made at ScienceHackDay 2013.

Most days I spent a chunk of time in front of my laptop, analysing data, looking for papers or trying to write up some of my work.

I have to feed cells two to three times a week. I have a flask of lymphocytes floating in media, and when they’ve used up the nutrients in the media and dropped out too much waste product, I need to put some of them in fresh media (and discard the rest that I don’t need).

Two days  prior to an experiment, I prepare my cells by causing them to die by apoptosis. I then stain my cells, and go down to the flow cytometer to measure them. Then I get to analyse more data!

I also study my cells using western blots. I take the cells and add lots of detergent to break them down.  I put them at the top of a gel and use electricity to drag the individual proteins through the gel. The proteins separate by size and I can use more electricity to transfer them onto a membrane which I can then stain to identify some properties of the proteins.

Some days I get to go to meetings or seminars.