Work experience: what have we been up to?

Throughout the past three days doing work experience at MMM we’ve learnt about the different roles within the department, their responsibilities and contributions to research. After being briefed about a potential deadly outbreak in the MMM labs we were tasked with trying to identify the offending pathogen. Swabbing high contact points and warm areas such as our shoes, lab doors and keyboards we set about trying to culture the bacteria. Next we learnt how to use the streaking method to transfer the bacteria to our agar plates and create single colonies that we could later analyse. Examining the plates the next day, the coffee machine proved to be the incubator for the infection, the plates were crawling with enterococcus, coliforms and even a particularly large fungus. Luckily, Kate’s keyboard and Tree’s phone proved to be relatively clean.

We then took our sample to the OUH labs to try to figure out what groups the bacteria came from. Gram staining helped us with this, and so we doused our samples with purple, then orange then clear before finally red liquid. Examining them under the microscope allowed us to ascertain not only whether the bacteria were gram positive or gram negative, as illustrated by their purple or red colour, but also whether they were bacillus or cocci (rods or circles).

Throughout our placement we got a sense about the daily runnings of a lab, sitting in on a group talk on public engagement as well as hosting a journal club and recipient individual talks from different members of the team. Helen spoke to us about project management and her role within Oxford University, as well as the time she got invited to the American ambassadors 4th of July party! Though, she did assure us that this isn’t typical of a role in management. Ali talked to us about the green initiatives the lab is taking to try to improve their environmental sustainability such as recycling loops and pipette tips, and how they managed to achieve a silver in the green impact award and are now aiming for gold. Carlos talked to us about the computing side to the research and how the group works together so that everyone can do the roles their best at.

Highlights of our time at MMM included developing the dance mat game with Jo and Hieu, creating a new level for a local primary school that they are visiting soon, and creating agar art with Cat and Eloise, making some beautiful flowers!

We really enjoyed our time at MMM and can’t wait to join them some day!

Iris, Lori, Jess