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Cartilage is a tissue that lines the ends of your bones in the body and is shown is this diagram.  It is a really useful tissue which helps to keep your joints, and you, moving smoothly!  However, cartilage is really bad at repairing itself, so it needs outside help and that is where scientists, like me, come in. Osteoarthritis is one really common disease that happens when cartilage is damaged and for patients it can be a really painful disease to live with.  At the moment osteoarthritis can’t be cured but there is a lot of research going on to improve the repair of damaged cartilage.

Hang on though; I said I work on dog joints right?  Well, dogs can get osteoarthritis too and cartilage is actually really similar between species, so the dog can be considered as a model organism.  A model organism is where scientists look at a species that is easier to study in the lab in order to get a better understanding of what is happening in other organisms.

So what do I actually do?  I look at a particular cell type called the chondrocyte and here is a picture of some dog chondrocytes I have grown in the lab.  This cell type is only found in cartilage. I look at the behaviour of this cell in the lab because one current method of treating damaged cartilage is to take chondrocytes, grow them in the lab and put them back in the patient.    The main problem with this is that these cells change their personality in the lab; just as you adapt and change to different situations – so do cells!  Therefore my work is based on encouraging chondrocytes to be and stay themselves. I have looked at the physical environment these cells are grown in as well as feeding them different supplements to help them remain a true chondrocyte.

There are a lot of different elements to being a scientist – it’s not all about being in the lab and when you are in the lab there are lots of different things to do!  Some days I have to check to see how my cells are growing; to see if they need feeding or see if they need to move house (this is called passaging, when the cells have no more space to grow, they are put in a bigger container).  Other days I need to look at the cells more closely to see what proteins they are making.  When I’m not in the lab, I am looking to see what other research groups have found out about chondrocytes!  It is really important as a scientist to keep up-to-date what is happening around you in your subject area!