Author: Daniel

Postdoctoral Research Associate interested in Candida, oral biofilms, virulence, microbial interactions, host cell responses to infections and tissue engineering.
Father to two amazing boys, and husband to an incredible wife. Hobbies include writing, listening to and performing music with my band and spending time with the family.

Life balance

14th May 2016 / / 0 Comments

A PhD is a big deal. It’s a great big research project spanning three or four years, in which you have to find something novel.. To contribute to knowledge.
It not only takes over your life, it becomes your life. It engulfs you in its enormity, sapping every ounce of strength you have (or think you had)  until your submission, and even then it isn’t finished with you…until the viva.

During this most incredible journey, you do have highs, and lows.. Some very high highs, and certainly some very low lows. But what makes it all bearable, is the acknowledgement that you do, and should rightly so, have a life outside of the PhD.. For some, it may be socialising with friends, down the pub, gaming or whatever. It doesn’t actually really matter what it is, just that you know it exists. Make use of it, let it help those low days become average days, let it help those average days become good days and most importantly, let it tell you that you are still human.

Today I spent some time with my two boys, and sat out the back while I watched my eldest play with his friends – friends that he has established on his own, by engaging with them, playing with them and just being a nice little boh. Trivial so it may seem, but this is such a precious sight and puts everything about life into perspective.
Oh, and I had an oreo ice cream 🙂 #GoodDay
DM

If it looks too good to be true

12th May 2016 / / 0 Comments

Then you’ve probably done something wrong! Like picking up a pack of chicken breasts at £1.15 thinking you have a real bargain, when they are actually £1.15 for each breast…so £4.60 in total!! But you buy two packs because you’ve no idea, and get home to be told what an idiot you really are!! Or adding too high a concentration of standard! In this case anyway…
Looking at host cell responses for cytokine production of cells after microbial challenge, the ELISA to quantify this cytokine worked all too well. The concentration of the standard was way too high for the samples added..so a few amendments needed but nearly all good to go – great news!
DM

Write, they said..

19th April 2016 / / 1 Comment

It’ll be fun, they said.

One necessary evil of doing a PhD is the thesis. Some see it as a celebration of the culmination of years of hard work, in a single volume of easy reading. It might well be, but it is still a very daunting task – 80,000 (give or take) words, flowing story, novel research communicated in a succinct, but scientific, and valid but not boring manner. Simple right!?

There is no best time to start – only “if you haven’t started yet, its already too late!”. That said, I have, if only for my own sanity, started writing, and while knowing my field somewhat better than I did two and a bit years ago, still struggle with the imposter syndrome that appears to rear its ugly head at the most inappropriate times. Do I really have the knowledge to write a thesis?! Am I going to have enough to make my three year journey seem worthwhile and sufficient for a doctoral degree?! Time will tell, and PIs of course..

DM

DanielMorse.me.uk

14th April 2016 / / 0 Comments

Yesterday afternoon I attended a seminar all about social media, and my use of it as a researcher. We heard some really great talks; Joe Nicholls talked about why it is so important to have a social media presence for current a future research careers. Lucy Collins then told us about Altmetrics, and how social media usage impact can be measured (very interesting!), which is as important as journal impact factors for publications!

Having heard some inspiring talks, and all about the other side of social media (when it goes wrong..), I decided that my social media presence was a good thing, and plan to continue this. As a result, I updated a few things on the web (about.me for one) and invested in a domain to tie things together:
danielmorse.me.uk 🙂

Next is to keep up to date and interact more with experts in my field (which I do already – mainly on twitter) and decide how to best separate (if necessary) personal/professional social media..tough one that!

Daniel

Holidays are like buses

4th April 2016 / / 0 Comments

You need a holiday, and then Easter holiday arrives, and your planned holiday to Burnham with the family does too! Fun times!!

The kids had a great time away, Oliver crawling like theres no tomorrow, Ruben winning another Minion toy not he grabber machine…on the last attempt! Time spent on the beach, in the arcade, in the pool (and on the slide!) and Ruben swimming like a pro. A well needed break away, and although I had a stinking cold for a few days through it, was good fun and lovely time spent with the family.

Back to work and getting things in motion for a busy few weeks of experiments. Host cell responses and biofilm interactions to do, sequencing data is starting to come back now so will have many meetings on analysing that no doubt – and let the supercomputer do the number crunching! So after a slow few weeks since Gregynog (with breaks and such), letting cells go, and grow again from LN stocks, things are looking ever more promising.

Had a lovely catch up with Chris from genesis (my old work) last week too – nice to see he’s doing well, and such a shame that he’s now left the company..but all good things..

I’ve also entered the Cardiff Half Marathon again this year, and am running for Stroke Association – hopefully we can raise some much needed funds to help those suffering with stroke (or helping those that suffer from them!). You can donate by visiting my just giving page (http://www.justgiving.com/danieljamesmorse) or by texting DJMO86 <amount> to 70070 (e.g. DJMO86 £5 to 70070) – I’d be really grateful if you could support me 🙂
DM

OMIG – Gregynog Hall

12th March 2016 / / 0 Comments

What a great week!

This week saw three of us from DENTL attend the Oral Microbiology and Immunology Group meeting at Gregynog Hall. Josh, Zahraa and I drove up (in a beautiful Toyota Verso) with no navigational problems this time round – after taking more than twice as long to get there last time because of a battery issue with phone leading to no sat nav, and no maps!!)

Upon arrival it was great to catch up with David B and Jon from GSK, Marcello and Dave S (OMIG committee) and the others.. We then attended the post-PhD career talk where we were given some insight into industry from Jon, and academic careers by Prof. Deirdre Devine – a wonderful woman with a wealth of academic knowledge and advice to give!

I also met a lovely student who is doing a very similar project to me, and there seems to be scope for some exchange of knowledge somewhere along the way I’ve no doubt :). My presentation went fairly well, although very nervous starting, and handsome great thought-provoking questions – particularly from Deirdre and Julian (Naglik). Josh presented really well, and handled his questions with confidence and good knowledge. After dinner, Zahraa defended her poster, again really well and with confidence – great representation for Cardiff University overall.

So it seems that the future for my research is looking pretty fruitful, and with many many external support networks/potential collaborators and just people that I can now approach for some guidance or advice, I feel in a great position moving forward and thinking longer term.

Such a great feeling attending a conference, it really fills you with motivation, confidence and gives you a great perspective on the bigger picture of your research. Cannot wait to get stuck in back in the lab again and deliver some incredible research!!
DM

Aseptic technique..

7th March 2016 / / 0 Comments

This is a pretty important aspect of microbiology: necessary to avoid contamination, or cross contamination; good old observation of strict aseptic technique.

Now you don’t necessarily have to observe strict protocols or even adhere to ‘strict’ aseptic technique, but if you are advised to work around a bunsen, flame tweezers before use, flame lids and keep tip boxes closed between use, then you’ll probably avoid most contamination risks. Well if you don’t listen, this is what you end up with.. 

 I’m pretty laid back about working habits and don’t get contamination, but I’m also impressed that it’s even possible to get this much contamination.. Oh well, positivity..that’s what they say right?!

DM

Doctor in training, teaching doctors in training

6th March 2016 / / 0 Comments

And so the practical SSC for undergraduate medics started and finished this week. Such a lovely group of students – very knowledgable, inquisitive and what I think was genuinely interested in oral microbiology!

The adherence assay is not a particularly challenging experiment to do, but for those that have no lab experience, it can still be quite exciting. The intro lecture was pretty good too – covered quite a lot of background, and hopefully passed on some knowledge and expertise of my own. Now they have a presentation of their own to think about and prepare for..

Final preparations are underway for OMIG which starts this Wednesday! Presentation is 95% finished, awaiting supervisors final input and then think about packing and the trip up :).

DM

When the PhD gives you lemons..

26th February 2016 / / 0 Comments

..make sure you get at least n=3. 

They say s PhD journey is 10% intelligence and 90% persistence and perseverance, and to be honest, I’m very lucky to have the project and supervision that I do. However, I would liked to have had this the other way around – not being able to get things to work in the first year, only to then generate a ton of data in the following years. It’s also times like these that the ‘imposter syndrome’ begins to rear its ugly head; why am I here when I can’t get s simple experiment to do what it should?! Why is cell biology such that cell lines appear to change in behaviour the more they’re passaged..that’s the whole point of an immortal cell line, it’s consistent! And thinking about it, it’s been consistent in my case but not the way it should be! Oh well, n=3 so whatever is, is.

On the positives, medic students are joining me next week for a dabble in the tiny world of microorganism and adherence,.going to be good fun and they’re really looking forward to it which is always nice :).

Preparation for OMIG well and truly underway too, car hire being sorted, presentations being written, posters being designed..and lots (and lots!) of lab work to boot! Looking forward to catching up with friends over a few drinks (soft, of course) 😉

DM

‘Flow’ing like a river

18th February 2016 / / 0 Comments

So the plan for the past few days was to keep my cells growing (enough to use them soon if they grow quick enough!), do a bit of monocyte work and set up and maintain biofilms.. and it has once again proved to be a somewhat challenging but rewarding week at that.

Cells have established themselves very well indeed, and I’ve managed to grow enough to have two sets of freezer stocks, and two flasks actively growing, and the keratinocytes are doing pretty well too 🙂 (albeit significantly slower growing than the fibs!). Monocyte work didn’t really go to plan..as ever..but still, learning how, and having the confidence to use the flow cytometer on my own is somewhat an achievement as far as I’m concerned – a mere microbiologist using some fancy tech haha! Still haven’t got the result I was hoping for, but it seems as though it is getting close to being statistically significant in it’s own right..so watch this space!

Back to the biofilm work that I’ve missed for some time while developing my ‘skills’ in tissue culture.. I fixed some for later (CLSM) and took some for RNA extraction, using the same method, but pooled three biofilms together..and managed to get more than 10x as much RNA yield!! Purity is amazing..but yield is just incredible. Considering for the past 2 years I’ve been getting yields of 40-80 ng/ul, to get 500 as the lowest is a pretty good achievement!! Fingers crossed for the next lot of batches too! I’ll have more DNA than I know what to do with 😀 (at least now I can do some proper qPCR optimising too..primer checks and all that jazz with consistent samples of DNA). Super chuffed to say the least!

Next week is the last before preparations for OMIG begin (9th-11th March, Gregynog (so excited)), and I have medic students with me Monday pm and Wed (am), Thursday and Friday all day..should be fun (I think!). Anyway, today is Thursday which means Friday tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to spending a lovely day with my two boys at the museum, Ruben is really looking forward to seeing the dinosaurs, and Oliver will be too I’m sure if he knew what was going on! Fun times ahead 😀
DM