Question: what is your favorite part of biology?

Jenny Batson answered on 17 Nov 2016:

Hi Josh
Cell Biology. I didn’t think it was interesting at school because we just had to learn how to draw a cell and what the main parts did but we didn’t ever think about it in detail or what really happens in disease. My doctorate was in cell biology looking at how cancer cells and normal cells move and interact with each other and its really interesting because you can film them and it turns out that if a cancer cell bumps into another cancer cell it turns around and moves away and you can see it stop, move its insides around and move away in a new direction. However, if a cancer cell bumps into a normal cell it doesn’t remember to do this and just keeps moving. Its also cool because you can stain parts of the cell with fluorescent labels to see what is active or not and this signalling can be incredibly dynamic, nothing like a school textbook.
Jenny