Alan Wilton, University of NSW.

My day in Science on 15th April was a typical day spent organising and communicating with students and colleagues. One advantage of being an academic is that I have a large degree of independence and since early mornings are not my most productive time I rushed into the campus from my beachside apartment which is a 5 minute drive (or 30 min walk) for a meeting with one of my PhD students at 10.

We are publishing a paper on our discovery of the gene that causes a genetic disease which is common in Border collies. It is a nerve degenerative disease called NCL that results in slow decline of young dogs and was a great thrill to finally identify the gene after 10 years of searching. The reviewers of the manuscript wanted us to make modifications that they think willl improve it before they will accept it in their journal. We had to discuss the progress in modifying tables and figures and changes to the wording to make it clearer etc.

The student went to make the amendments about 11 and I talked to one of my Honours students who is just beginning a year of research in the lab. He is working on a different dog disease, one that results in susceptibility to infections from lack of white cells in the blood. The experiments that were working so well a few weeks ago were now not working. It took a bit of detective work and two heads going over all the procedures for us to work out that there had been a simple confusion between two methods. He was using the conditions for sequencing instead of PCR which are different. He had been doing both successfully but got the two confused. I had the satisfaction of a problem solved and a promise of progress on the research.

Next I had to check that the part-time research assistant that I have employed to help us to detect the NCL defect in 600 Border collie samples knew what to do next. We are trying to optimise the experimental conditions to get the clearest results as people will use this information to determine whether to breed from a dog or not.

The student researching the demise of the dingo was away at a martial arts competition and the endocrinologist in the lab working on genetics of gestational diabetes was working at a clinic so I could check my emails First I had to contact a vet in Japan who had a suspected cases of NCL coming in and they wanted to find out how to go about getting the DNA test that we have developed done. We are just setting up this testing in the lab and the information is not yet readily available on the web. Besides sending samples from Japan requires knowledge of the right storage and handling and information on the Import Permits that are required to bring in biological samples.

Next I tried to contact a colleague and friend in New Zealand where I will be attending an international conference on Molecular Biology and Evolution in June. It will be good to catch up with old friends at the meeting and visit with my colleague’s family. Are there enough funds in the research grants to cover this? It is a long time since I did the accounts so I don’t know. A quick check takes 20 min and it shows I will have to pay for it myself. I sent a few personal emails to arrange a weekend away with friends camping and a few administrative ones. The dog breeders want to know when testing will be available. A friend wants me to find researchers in water quality testing to help check the water reclaiming system he has installed in his backyard so that he can reuse all the household waste water from washing and sewerage. It has to be shown to be free of bacteria and viruses before it can be used. He has gone to great expense because of his ecological ideals rather than be a user like the rest of us.

By 1:30 I managed to get time to a quick bit of electronic bill paying and write a letter objecting to a parking fine then grab a quick bit of breakfast/lunch to eat back in the office. It is a shame we spend so much of our day in the office when Sydney has such glorious days all year round. Shortly after I get back I get an unexpected call from a reporter who had seen an interview I did on the imminent extinction of the dingo in Australia. The ABC program Catalyst had a segment about the plight of the dingo and wanted to know about the DNA testing we are doing on wild dogs to determine if there are any purebred dingoes left out there. The reporter needed to check some facts and find further information which I sent by email.

I needed to make sure that the notes and data for next week’s computer practical were in order and I had to put the notes from Wednesday’s lecture on the web, then I went back to the revisions for the manuscript. I had realised that the data looks a little odd in the figure. It should not go up at the ends it should go down. Why does it do that? We had used the order of the genes for a genetic map. Now the complete genome of the dog was available and I can see the location of the genes on the the chromosome. This data is more accurate and gives a different gene order. The student will have to reanalyse the data with the new gene order and hopefully it will remove the anomalies.

5 pm and the students from the School were putting on a Happy Hour as they do every 2nd Friday. So after a few drinks and discussion with colleagues it was back to work by 6. I am on one of the Human Ethics Committees of the University and this month’s pile of applications had arrived for assessing. However, we needed to modify the text of the paper as requested by the reviewer and to reflect our new figures and tables so the applications will have to wait. I had to email a collaborator in Norway about the wording referring to some of his work. Meanwhile I am firing emails back and forth to the dog breeders about who we can get to do the testing for NCL in other countries. Some companies have shown a keen interest.

At 9:52 pm I finish my drafting of the changes to the paper and send them off to my student to look over before our Monday morning meeting. Now it is off to the local pub to join the students who are having the usual quiet end of week drink. They have a bit of a head start on me.

This is not what I envisaged I would be doing when I left school. I had a flare for science but that was chemistry not biology. I toyed with the idea of being a pharmacist, an analytical chemist or even a dentist. It was not until the last year of university that I discovered genetics. It was a good choice to do research and a PhD because since that time there has been a revolution in the field. Viva the revolution.