I’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Organs Zone. It has scientists studying health and disease in various parts  of our bodies. Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
Hmmm…I’m not sure who this is for. I’m not doing any animal testing right now. We’re just following a big group of kids and taking data on them (I shouldn’t call them kids…they’re 21 now!). So no real experimentation. Just seeing how a population grows and what is “normal” for a population of kids growing up in Perth.
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Our research group studies the digestive system using experimental animals – there are few reasons why we do this and not use humans.
1. The digestive system is large and complex and we can study it at different levels. If we want to look at how each organ works, it is difficult to use humans especially if we want to study the tissue at the cellular level. Instead we use animal models if they share similar anatomical structure and behaviour to humans. Did you know that guinea pigs are the most studied model of the enteric nervous system in the gut?
2. Animal models such as fruit flies or mice can have specific characteristics selected to study – we can isolate the gene responsible for a particular trait (eg. cells producing insulin) and then remove or add the selected gene containing the instructions to make that trait, so that when animals reproduce they pass on that trait to their offspring. We call these animals ‘transgenic’ and can study the difference in behaviour between transgenic animals and wild type (normal). We don’t have the approval to do this in humans, we may end up with something like the X-men – secret weapon: projectile diarrhea!
3. Animals reproduce faster (it takes 7 days for an egg to turn into a mature fruit fly!) and it is easier to study time effects this way – it may not be feasible to study humans because the study takes too long to find the answer and can be quite expensive/difficult to conduct a study over a long period of time.
It may be possible to study certain aspects of digestion directly by studying humans. For example, if we are interested in looking at how long it takes the food consumed to travel the length of the digestive tract (intestinal transit) we can use food containing a dye marker and measure the time it takes to for it to come out the other end.
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These guys have done a great job of answering the question.
Mostly, the work I do is on mice, but we also collect samples from humans, which would normally just be thrown away. We are very resourceful! 🙂
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Currently, I’m only looking at things in a mouse. But we have human and primate tissue that I can use.
Like Mellina said, there are complexities in all systems. You need to figure out what’s normal and find out what the baseline of things are before you use more “precious” tissues or look at more specific things.
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I use mice to study Autism which is a condition that leads to problems with social interaction, language and restrictive and repetitive behaviours. We know that Autism runs in families and many gene mutations have been found. We also know that the environment may impact on Autism, as behavioural therapy seems to work in some children. There is no treatment, no cure and very little understanding of the causes of Autism.
Some people are studying Autism in children who have the condition. They observe their behaviour, test to see what genes they have (you can do this with a cotton swab of the inside of your cheek), taking images of their brains and are looking if behavioural therapy can help.
We can’t look at how their brains are organised, how they function on a microscopic level or how certain genes or environments change their brains. This isn’t possible, or ethical. Instead we introduce genetic mutations into mice and we are able to observe changes in their brains and even their behaviour.
Why mice?
As it happens, mice are uniquely suited for this work. They are genetically very similar to humans, with over 99% similarity in the areas of the brain we’re studying in autism research. Mice are also social animals, making it possible to observe the impact of the genetic changes in their behaviour. Finally, mice grow fast and are relatively inexpensive to raise.
When we introduce a human genetic mutation into a mouse we are able to see for sure whether that change introduces a structural change in the mouse’s brain. But more important, we get a chance to learn how such a change impacts the mouse’s behavior. Indeed, we are finding genetic differences that do actually translate into autistic behaviors in mice. For example, some differences make normally social mice totally ignore other mice in a cage.
Once scientists have a mouse that exhibits a particular autistic trait, it is then possible to experiment with therapies to correct the problems. We are also able to study the relationship between a genetic difference and the environment with mice.
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