Question: What sort of experiments do you do with the school groups that come to your lab?

Vicky Forster answered on 10 Nov 2013:

Hello Charlotte,

In my lab we mainly work on cancer, and some of the experiments we do are quite dangerous, so it isn’t always possible for school groups to do the actual work we do for safety reasons. However what we try and do is let the students do the same kind of experiments we do, but using slightly different things. For example, I look at the DNA of human cells to see what causes cancer – and I have to get the DNA out of the human cells so that I can do this. When students come in, we do an experiment with them where they use almost exactly the same method to get DNA out of fruit! Strawberries, raspberries and kiwi fruit have the most DNA as they have lots of seeds, which contain a lot of DNA. You could even ask your teacher if this might be something you could do at school – as it is quite a safe experiment and really fun to do! You can see a video on how to do this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGnmofoKmHQ&feature=related