Question: what new things have you found that no-one has seen or found

Kirsty Ross answered on 20 Jun 2012:

I have seen novel results in my research. For example, the bacteria I used to work on has three versions of a protein that is also found in the flu virus. We hypothesised that drugs that target the flu virus might also target the bacterial versions as well. The drug is called Tamiflu (you might have heard of it). We treated the mice with the drug and then infected them with the bacteria. The bacteria were also genetically engineered to glow in the dark, so that we could watch the infection developing inside the mice. This allowed us to follow the same group over time, rather than culling more animals at timepoints to see what was going on. At the end of the experiment the Tamiflu treated mice had fewer bacteria in their lungs, blood and liver, and survived for longer than the placebo treated mice. That was a very cool result (which I really must publish sooner rather than later!)