Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
My research involves putting protein complexes into the gas phase of a mass
spectrometer and trying to learn as much as we can about them
in a new environment.
Once you can look at them like that you can learn things that are
actually quite difficult sometimes to capture
in other phases for example, there are
membrane proteins which talk to soluble proteins,
they're embedded in the cell wall of the membrane
but they have other parts that they're talking to
and if you try and trap those
it's actually quite difficult for them to communicate
between the two halves because one half is in solution
and the other half is in a micelle, for example,
or embedded in the membrane. And getting the right phase
whereby they can both communicate can be quite challenging.
But we found that if we could get them into the gas phase,
then we could look at allostery and communication
between the head and a base in a very new way.
I'm a physical scientist really trying to
apply the expertise that I have to solve biological problems.
And very recently, for example,
we've been studying the Hsp90 series of interactions
and for that we were monitoring about fifteen complexes simultaneously.
We had to apply all the rigor of a physical chemistry approach to get the rate
constants and the equations to match and balance for this
very complicated system, and this really told us,
and informed us, about the complexes
that could form within the cell
so I think that was for me a
very nice example of some very sort of rudimentary
rate equations and physical chemistry
coming in to solve a very complicated biological problem,
I'm very proud of that one.
When I was quite young I didn't go to university
and I regret that enormously, I would've loved to have gone now.
At the time I thought oh you know, it's not for me, I'll go to work and
I'll work in industry but actually
I think I really did miss out on some great times that everybody
told me about which I didn't actually experience.
So looking back I think I made it harder for myself because
I did seven years of part time study to get to the point
where I could go and do a PhD whereas
if I'd gone the normal route maybe it would've been
a lot, different.
I think the key to any successful career in science is
to follow your passion and I really believe if you find something
that you love, which I was very fortunate to do;
quite early on I became very excited about my flying molecules and I thought,
you know this is what gets me out of bed in the morning
this is why I rush into the lab and this is why I don't find it hard to
put my whole effort into this now my children have all obviously, left home,
I can completely concentrate and focus on this piece of research and
I think when I started there were a lot of skeptics
and a lot of people said to me, you know it will never work and
proteins will turn inside out in the gas phase, it's not really useful.
And I thought but you know I really believe it,
I really think there's something there and
that these molecules are trying to tell us something
you know we just don't understand it at the moment
but once we understand it, it will be hugely exciting
but I think you have to have passion and conviction for what you're doing,
if you lose those then you really are behind and lost
and I think that's the same whether you're male or female,
had a career break or not, you really just have to have that
passion and conviction, I think.