New year, new resolutions. One is to upload at least 1 blip a week. 'They' say that making a resolution specific and making sure other people know about them means you're more likely to keep them!

I would like to make my blip more about my work at university. I am really passionate about science and would like other people to share in it. There's so much media out there about science (and scientists), some good and some bad. I'd like to show people that the majority of scientists are very ordinary (if geeky) people, and the work we do isn't scary and not all of it is world changing. 

So to start. This photo is of a plant, a little weed, called Arabidopsis thaliana. It's what I work on. It's called a 'model organism'. This is because it's cheap and relatively quick to grow. A bacterial model organism is E.Coli, an insect model organism is the fruit fly a mammalian model organism is mouse. 

Model organisms (like all models) aren't perfect, but they are useful. They are usually easy to grow and we know a lot about them. I personally find plants slightly tedious, particularly because of the length of time they take to grow. E.coli you whack in a tube and overnight it's ready! A wee bit quicker than the 1-2 months that Arabidopsis takes!