THE GENE HUNTER
Seán Duke talked to Aoife McLysaght about sharing her passion for science.
World War II a statistician called
IN Abraham Wald was employed to analyse US planes returning from air combat. Metal was scarce, and the idea was to only reinforce the most vulnerable parts of the planes. The parts of returning aircraft that made it home full of bullets must be the toughest parts, Wald reasoned, and so a decision was made not to reinforce these areas, but to use the scarce metal to strenghten the other parts of the aircraft.
Dr Aoife McLysaght, geneticist at TCD, understands Walsh’ s logic and applies it to her own gene hunting efforts. Dr McLysaght is identifying genes that are most sensitive to being hit with‘ bullets’- which in genetic terms means being hit with random gene mutations. This is important because it is known that
SCIENCE SPIN Issue 58 Page 16 in certain sensitive genes – right across all living species – having too many copies of a particular gene, or too few, can result in a disease.
School
Dubliner Aoife attended her local national school before attending St Andrew’ s College, on Booterstown Avenue. She recalled that although there wasn’ t too much science taught in primary school, she was very interested and engaged by such science as was on offer. In particular, Aoife remembers presenting a science project with her best friend in sixth class, which involved explaining aspects of the weather to other pupils and teachers.
“ I had fun little demonstrations, to do with the power of wind and air,” Aoife recalled.“ We had a plastic bag with a book on top of it. We got the opening of the bag and blew into it and showed that it would lift the book. We also had a glass milk bottle, with a balloon on top that was not inflated. We placed the bottle into a jug of really hot water, and the air would expand and inflate the balloon. I remember having loads of fun doing that,” she said.
Her interest in science was strongly established by the time she attended St Andrew‘ s. She remembers that she was always engaged with science, and actively listened to the teachers, so that information went in, making life much easier when it came to passing the exams. When the Leaving Certificate rolled around Aoife chose to do Biology and Chemistry, but not Physics. She believes that was a mistake in hindsight as she always enjoyed physics.
Instead she chose to study geography, because it was regarded as a science subject by the universities. This was a mistake, she says now, because while she enjoyed physical geography- such as explanations of why earthquakes occur— she did not at all like social geography, which for her involved too much memorising of lots of very dull information. Her experience has told her in the years since that people will succeed at what they enjoy. That was proven when her geography result proved her worst Leaving Certificate result.
At St. Andrew’ s, she was inspired by the efforts of a great teacher, Dr Nick Frewin, a PhD holder, who taught her science and biology.“ He was just really good,” recalled Aoife.“ He spent a lot of time clearly explaining things, had well planned lessons, and there was a lot in it beyond the course. He was well liked enough for people to write him