• Question: Have you ever had a eureka moment

    Asked by lolliiex to Louise, Michaela, Sian, Steve, Yvette on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Michaela Livingstone

      Michaela Livingstone answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I’ve had many many many eureka moments in my life, all through school and university and then more so doing research. One example I guess is when I read about how exactly you get from ATGC, the letter that make up DNA, to proteins – the process of gene expression and what the genetic code meant. Before I couldn’t work out how you could get us from those 4 letters really.

    • Photo: Yvette Wilson

      Yvette Wilson answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I’ve had many small eureka moments – more like I’ve just chipped away to adding to biological knowledge:-)
      one has been when our mathematical models of how plant flowering genes interact to time when plants form flowers could predict the results of actual experiments to test the models.
      Another has been in finding that snapdragon species that grow in the same geographic region but look very different are more similar to each other genetically than similar looking species in a different geographic region. This means that the species in the same region interbreed with each other, but their morphologies remain distinct due to selection on a few a important genes. I don’t fully understand how this works though.
      I’ve had a few discoveries in my new (lignin) project such as I’ve discovered that barley has many copies of the genes that encode the enzymes that make lignin and now I’m interested to find out whether all the copies underlie lignin synthesis or just a few of them and why.

      Hope I’ve made some sense – let me know if I haven’t and I can try to do better

    • Photo: Steven Kiddle

      Steven Kiddle answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Yes and no. I have had a moment when suddenly i think of something cool, that will help with what im doing. But they are mini-eurekas , each one takes my research a little further. I think you are refering to large-Eurekas like Einstein, i certainly haven’t had one of them!

    • Photo: Louise Johnson

      Louise Johnson answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      No, but I get lots of “D’oh!” moments. 1000 d’ohs add up to one eureka.

    • Photo: Sian Harding

      Sian Harding answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      I had that when I realised that beta-blockers could be activators at another pathway,and this explains many things. It was like a physical click in my head. very addictive. its a bit like gettting a joke, only magnified

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