My Summer Placement

This summer, a research lab at Bath University obligingly allowed me to come and do a summer placement with them. Furthermore, the Biochemical Society improved my situation even more when they agreed to grant me funding. I was so overwhelmed by all of these gifts that were being bestowed upon me, that I was a little anxious about starting the placement. I have to admit that I was scared the Biochemical Society had made a mistake. I've never worked in a real research lab before, especially not on my own! Wouldn't I be completely inept? Aren't they worried that I'll blow up the lab by mistake?? That I'll destroy years' worth of research???


However, by the second day I was already heading straight to the lab in the mornings and carrying out my very own PCR reactions. In addition, I was signed up (on my first day!) to attend a Structural Biology Conference at Reading University in July!

I have another confession to make... I apologise to all you science research enthusiasts out there, but I have always imagined that working in research would be a very boring job... I am beginning to realise that I may have been wrong. Admittedly, it can get tedious and sometimes a little slow and repetitive. But then most jobs can be like that at times and not many people can say that they are working on ground-breaking research and may have even found a possible cure for a deadly disease. The important thing to remember during the periods of tedium, is that what I am doing matters!

So, more about my placement. The lab I am working in is researching neuroscience, specifically the molecular mechanisms of memory. The protein we are working on is called KIBRA, which is a scaffold protein and very important for memory. KIBRA is linked to Alzheimer's disease, but unfortunately not much is known about how the protein functions. Consequently, the research being done in my placement lab is to determine the structure and function of the KIBRA protein, thus helping to understand how memory is regulated.

I will be writing regular updates (probably once a week) on how I'm getting on and to tell you what work I have been doing. So if you're interested, please subscribe! Thanks   =]

Typhoid Mary: Innocent victim or biological terrorist?

On the 23rd of September 1869, a baby girl called Mary Mallon was born in Cookstown, Ireland. Around the age of 15, she emigrated to America. This marked the beginning of a remarkable series of events.

Salmonella typhi is a motile bacteria and the causative agent of typhoid fever. From 1900 onwards, a number of typhoid outbreaks began to appear across New York and the surrounding areas. After one particular family, the Warrens, became ill at their rented holiday home in 1906, the owner of the establishment hired an investigator to find the source of the disease. At this point, S. typhi was known to be transmitted via contaminated food and water. Consequently, the outbreak was traced back to Mary, who had been hired as a cook for the Warrens' holiday. Furthermore, when her employment history was explored it was found that typhoid outbreaks had occurred at her every job. Overall, it was thought that Mary had already caused 22 infections and 1 death.

Unfortunately, when approached by health inspectors asking for stool and blood samples, Mary reacted violently and refused to comply. Therefore, she was taken to Willard Parker Hospital in New York and was forced to give samples. These were found to have high concentrations of S. typhi and thus it was proven that she was a carrier of the disease.

The question that this poses is whether or not Mary purposefully spread the disease. One reason which would suggest she knew about her involvement is that she appeared to leave her jobs quite quickly after an outbreak of typhoid began. However, this could have been mere coincidence. Furthermore, she was a perfectly healthy individual. How could she have known that she had the disease?

Unfortunately for Mary, she was moved to an isolated island to prevent any further spread. Many thought this unfair and Mary herself didn't even believe she had the disease. After all, she had never shown any symptoms. Eventually, Mary appealed and was allowed to leave the island on the condition that she never worked as a cook again. But once more, outbreaks of typhoid began to appear. In 1915, the Sloane Maternity Hospital had an outbreak, causing two deaths. The source was traced to a newly hired cook, known as Mrs Brown. After further investigation, Mrs Brown was revealed to be a pseudonym for Mary Mallon. Consequently, it became known that Mary had gone against the conditions of her release and reverted to her old job of being a cook, this time in the knowledge that she was the cause of typhoid. Therefore, it could be said that she intentionally harmed and killed people by spreading the disease. In the end, Mary Mallon was isolated once again on the same island, but this time for the rest of her life.

Nowadays, Mary Mallon has become known as the infamous "Typhoid Mary". So was she really malicious and intent on causing the spread of the deadly disease? Or was she just a woman who strongly believed she was healthy due to the fact that she never had any symptoms? Maybe if someone had taken the time to explain to her that the disease can be symptomless and told her the methods of transmission, she might have understood. But either way, there is no denying that Mary was dangerous and harmful to society, having caused 47 illnesses and 3 deaths. In addition, this case study could be useful research for biological warfare. The possibility of being able to infiltrate a population with a healthy carrier of a deadly disease, opens up a whole new method of terrorism.

So, was Typhoid Mary an innocent victim or a biological terrorist? You decide.