-
Asked by anon-266977 to Veronica on 5 Nov 2020.
-
Veronica Caraffini answered on 5 Nov 2020:
Hi, I love working with cells! This was the first job I had when I entered into a laboratory for the first time. And still now, many years later, working with cells it’s one of the parts of my job that I like the most! The first time I was in the lab, I was given some cells, they were in a plastic rounded box, called dish, and I was asked to look at them. To see the cells, that are really tiny, and you cannot see just with your eyes, you use an instrument that is called microscope. This has a lens that allows you to see also the tiny cells. But at the beginning I wasn’t sure how to use a microscope and I really couldn’t see anything! Luckily, with some help, I learned how to use a microscope and now I can easily have a look at my cells every day!
-
Comments
Zahra commented on :
I love working with cells! It’s one of the most important parts of my job, and I find it amazing how much cells in a dish can tell you. To see the cells actually alive under a microscope is incredible, and it’s exciting and interesting to see what happens to them when you put different medicines or chemicals on them. I’m working to find new medicines we can use to treat cancer, and using cells in the lab can give us an idea of what may or may not work!
Romain commented on :
Cells are great! So yes, I do like them a lot! They are so complex that sometimes it feels like they work by magic. But no, they use many, many types of molecules that constantly talk to each other to allow them to stay alive. And that’s exactly what cell biologists are trying to understand: how all these components (more than 20,000 different proteins and many other types of molecules) work together so that a cell can divide, eat, produce energy etc.
Cells are also great because it is easy to create many many clones of them, of one particular type. So you can set some aside and do one experiment and set some others to do another experiment and compare the results of the two experiments! And because you know the cells were clone of each other in both experiments, it makes sense to compare the results (you’re actually comparing apple cells to apple cells!)