Question: Hi Danny im really interested in your work, im just wondering what kind of experiments you do?

Danny Ward answered on 2 Nov 2018:

Hi there Garry,

I do a lot of work looking at how bacteria infect. To do this I use a plant called arabidopsis thaliana (also known as thale cress). I apply bacteria to the leaves in a controlled environment and evaluate the disease symptoms to understand if the bacteria is good at infecting plants and why.

I do a similar thing with blood cells. I apply bacteria to blood cells and look to see if there are any disease symptoms to help understand human and mammalian disease.

I also work with the DNA and proteins within bacteria. Their genetic instructions (their DNA) and their biological molecules made of things called amino acids (proteins) can be investigated to understand why the bacteria infect and how we can stop them.

To do this I will sequence DNA to see what the genes in the DNA do. I will also purify the bacterial proteins to see if they are important for infection.