Project 3: Jo Young

This year on the 15 th April I was thousands of miles away from my native Scotland and was visiting a remote field station on a tiny island 75 miles north of Seattle. San Juan island is about the same size as the Isle of Arran off the coast of Argyle, with a population to match. The climate is could almost fool you into thinking you were in Scotland but the golf courses are absent, with an 80 square kilometre nature reserve dominating a large part of the island.

I had flown to the island the previous day on a tiny seaplane in which I was the only passenger. After that taste of executive travel I quickly came back down to earth as I walked the 2.5 miles to the field station, dropping into the small supermarket to buy bagels (when in America……) on the way. My accommodation was a good sized cabin all to myself on the quiet campus except for the occasional student scurrying towards the dining hall.

Friday harbour field station is part of the University of Washington, with permanent research teams in areas such as marine biology, cell and molecular biology and Bioinformatics. During my Msc project last year, I used a program, Ingeneue, that had been developed there to simulate gene networks. I had decided to visit this year to see how progress on the new version of the software was going and to learn more about their research. Throughout the day I met up with various scientists to discuss their work ranging from intracellular bacterial motility to software production, and ventured into town with two PhD students for lunch. I was given a tour of the station's facilities, including a series of tanks containing various sea creatures including sea urchins, sea anemones and starfish which had all been caught locally.

Friday harbour is an ideal site for research with marine organisms. Situated right on the water on a nature reserve with a range of research vessels. Walking out onto the jetty and peering into the water you can see hundreds of tiny moon jellyfish, while back on dry land Deer roam freely next to the cabins and labs. At night the Raccoons come out and attempt to raid the bins, only to freeze guiltily when they see you.

After a day trying to take in as much as I could about Listeria , gene networks and actin filaments, I was invited to dinner where I tried the institute Director's own special potent brew of cider. I then attempted to eat fresh crab without making a mess, which proved to be quite a challenge. We drove back to the campus at about 11pm, and my hosts went back into the lab to continue working. I realised living on a field station definitely rules out 9 to 5 hours…..

Jo Young