James visits Colaiste Bhride and finishes up in the lab

My last weeks have been quite interesting. Joseph took Judy and I to a secondary school in Co. Wicklow for an outreach visit. The early mornings at Co. Wicklow are magical; the mist rising over the hills greets you and sheep and cattle graze within the vicinity. When it rains, the crashing waters of the rivers can be heard from afar. It’s serene and ideal for learning. At the school we meet Mrs. Lee, who is the facilitator for the Transition Year students. Mrs Lee is absolutely dedicated to her students. It’s was interesting that the TY students were so conscience of global issues, such as food security and sustainable living. At such a young age they understood the need for food security, which, especially in developing countries, can never be overemphasized. We also had a debate on various issues from HIV/AIDS to the availability of clean water to overseas developing aid. Though the students were conscience of HIV/AIDS, they hadn’t learned very much information about the disease or other diseases of poverty.  However with continuous interaction between CDPC trainees from developing countries and Irish students, this gap can be more easily bridged.

James meets with students from Colaiste Bhride, Co. Wicklow

My last two weeks involved interlinking everything I had learned over the last three months.  It’s where bioinformatics complement lab experiments.  Dr. Noel was kind enough to give me some African trypanosome sequences to work with. African trypanosomes are parasites transmitted by tsetse flies and cause a fatal disease in humans in sub-Saharan Africa called sleeping sickness. Trypanosomes are also important parasites of livestock animals and are a major constraint on agricultural and economic development in the region. Using a computer program named Clustal I made multiple alignments of the sequences that Noel gave me and also determined the regions of the sequences that code for proteins. One of the genes has five copies in the African trypanosome genome. Using another computer program I was able to design what we call DNA primers that allowed me to look at the expression of these genes in trypanosomes. To my surprise I found out that the expression of one out of the five is dominant over the others and this has implications for how the expression of genes is controlled in these parasites. By the end of these experiments it was clear to me how well simple biological hypotheses generated from bioinformatics results can be tested in wet lab experiments. 

Daniella, Antony, Ruth, and James: Cell Signalling and Host Pathogen lab; my Irish familyOnce the experiments were done, Noel took me for an Irish safari.  It was a typical Irish day: wet and windy.  You can never ask more than that from the Irish weather. We headed out towards Howth, which Nadine had spoken of so highly. On the way to Howth we made several stops, first at the coast - the beach was beautiful and the breeze kept spitting all the sea water on our faces, but the view compensated for all of that.  We then headed out to the top of the Howth head, there is a nature trail which one can walk down the cliff overlooking the sea, however the mist on the day was not abetting, so we couldn’t do the walk. We finally got to Howth and it’s everything one can imagine.  The area was absolutely grand. I did the walk around the sea, and saw my first sea seals, they are very likeable creatures. Just when I thought I had seen enough of Ireland, Joseph told me he had an extra pair of tickets and he took me to watch a rugby match, Leinster versus Cardiff. It was great fun really and to spice it all up were all of Ireland being well costumed for Halloween!

On my Irish safari!

Visiting the Famine memorial in the Dublin Docklands

As I head back home, I feel that I have achieved all the milestones  that I had set out in my training. The next step is to use all that I have learned back home. In addition to this, I have made many friends.  I feel part of big happy family that is so diverse yet so similar in many ways. May the Irish wind always blow behind the CDPC to great heights. 

In the lab