• Question: Kerstin what type of experiment do you do in your typical day and what got you so interested in science

    Asked by rythepie13 to Kerstin on 15 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Kerstin Zechner

      Kerstin Zechner answered on 15 Mar 2010:

      Hey rythepie13, thanks for your question! I’ll try to keep the answer brief, because I can talk about my research alll day 🙂
      One thing that I do a lot is isolate the RNA (so the molecule that gets copied from the DNA that codes for a gene) from the worms. To do this I have to kill them in a scary chemical called phenol (well the chemical scares me, because it can burn your skin! :(). The RNA I get out of the worms I then analyse, to see how much there is, so how much actually gets produced. By changing the environment the worms grow in, for example, we can then see what effect that change has on the production of RNA. I hope that sort of answers the first question!
      I always was interested in animals and how things worked around me, but I only really got interested in science during uni. Some of my teachers there were so enthusiastic about research and science that it was contagious and now I love it 🙂

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