UCL Lab talks and Tour –

Below are the speakers and the order in which we met them all.  I was absolutely ‘blown away’ by their enthusiasm and knowledge of their subject areas.  It was clear that every single one of them was really excited by their respective research. They are all on a mission to understand the origins of life.  I thoroughly enjoyed my once in a lifetime visit to what I call the ‘origins of life lab’ at UCL.

Talk Images

Talk Images

Enrique was working with fruit flies to look for chemical signals. Below are some of the images from his talk.

Talk Images

Feixue was doing work using a special chamber that allowed for the omission of oxygen. Each of us tried putting our hands into the chamber.  This was so that the early conditions of earth could be replicated.  We all commented on how difficult it must be to work under those circumstances. This is because your hands are encased in on only white gloves but also a layer of relatively thick rubber.

Oxygen Free Chamber

Below is a video short showing how the the oxygen free chamber is accessed.

Talk Images

It was so nice to see the enthusiasm of all of the scientists.  Hanadi was no exception.  Even though we were tight for time she ensured that we got plenty of information about the mass spectrometer.  I had never seen one of these before and it was amazing to be so ‘up close and personal with one’.  Below are some of the images from her talk.

Talk Images

Summary

I felt like it was a real privilege to be welcomed into the workspaces of the scientists. I thoroughly enjoyed their talks! It was incredibly insightful to hear their individual approaches in terms of searching for the origins of life.  Each member of the team is playing their part in finding their individual piece in the puzzle of life. It’s not every day that you get to see a mass spectrometer, an environmentally controlled chamber and fruit fly propagation.

As we said goodbye to the lab at UCL we were split into groups and each group handed a sampling kit.  This was for our walk back to Central Saint Martins.  The plan was to go back to CSM to grab some lunch and then collect samples for afternoon activities in the Grow Lab.