• Question: what is your favourite piece of equipment you use during your working day?

    Asked by Kitkat3 to Alex, Laura, Lesley, Richard, vediacan on 12 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Richard Prince

      Richard Prince answered on 12 Jun 2015:

      That would have to be my iMac. I’ve just got a load of new toys to go with it – a massive screen and dictation software plus a really cool vertical mouse that looks like a penguin.
      Best wishes
      Richard

    • Photo: Vedia Can

      Vedia Can answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Hi Kitkat3!!

      This use to be my favourite chocolate, so, cool name!

      My favorite piece of equipment has to be the Confocal Laser Microscope (the Leica TCS SP2 to be precise) because it allows me to look at the structure of the cells at better detail (with the help of really cool dyes!). This allows me to evaluate the effect of the peptides ( this is what I use to treat my cells) qualitatively on the cell structure.

      Best Wishes,

      Vedia

    • Photo: Laura Newton

      Laura Newton answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Hey!

      There are so many it’s hard to choose!
      Probably the ‘Automated Solid Phase Peptide Synthesiser.’ It’s a machine that you can program to make peptides (little pieces of proteins) automatically. It can attach 14 amino acids (the building blocks of peptides) in one night which saves me so much time. If I had to do it manually it would take 14 days!

      Thanks for your question!
      Laura

    • Photo: Lesley Pearson

      Lesley Pearson answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Oooh, so many choices!

      I think that the niftiest one has to be the Echo (http://www.labcyte.com/resources/videos/echo-liquid-handler) which we use to put tiny amounts of potential medicines into 384 well plates for me to test. This uses ‘acoustic dispensing’, which uses sound waves to transfer liquid down to 2.5 nl (that is about 1,000,000 of a ml!) from one plate to another. It basically shouts the liquid across! So cool!

    • Photo: Alex Agyemang

      Alex Agyemang answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Hi KitKat3,

      Cool name. I do not use equipments during my working day because my work is not lab-based. I’m office-based so I’m usually glued to my laptop. However, an important equipment used to obtain the data I use for my work is a High-Performance Liquid Chromotography which measures the concentration of drugs in blood, plasma or urine.

      Best wishes,
      Alex

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