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I look at how zebrafish (a small tropical fish) can regrow their organs and tissues after they have been damaged or even after they have lost them (a process called regeneration – the same as what Wolverine does in The X-men!). They are also astonishingly good at it, being able to regrow their fins, their eyes, their nerves and even their hearts.

Unfortunately, they are better than us at it, even though we have almost the same amount of genes (these are the messages that make us what we are). This means that if we understand how they do it, we could potentially do it ourselves too!

Well, first, I work with animals and working with animals is not easy (not for me nor for them). Our foremost priority is to always make sure that they are well and are being treated as good as possible, because without them, none of our research will ever happen. They get fed 3 times a day (just like us), they have constantly running warm water (kept at 28 degrees centigrade, so it is like their own habitat) and we give them the best quality food we can (we even give them small shrimp, which they love!). We also try to make sure they have clean tanks and aren’t getting sick (for this we have a vet that comes and visits them every few months to make sure they are healthy).

After all the animal work is done, I get to play around with cool machines, especially microscopes. With the microscopes I can photograph the fish and see how they regrow their tissues . With them I can observe down to the cell level (the living components that make us) and see how they move and what do they form. I also look at how they are doing “genetically”, in other words, I look at what are the messages they activate to be able to do what they can do, in order to  understand why they do it and why we can’t.