Westlakes Science Park- Genetics Department Visit

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Stephen Wilson

Westlakes Science Park – Genetics Department Visit

On Wednesday 21st of April I visited Westlakes Science Park to find out more about its genetics department and what it does. Westlakes is a research institute and it does research into many things to do with environmental sciences and health as well as other things. Westlakes does research and industrial consultancy for bigger businesses. Westlakes has many different sections and the part that I visited was the genetics department which does both the research and the consultancy. Its research is into sensitivity to radiation which is the variation in how much radiation affects different people. Its consultancy is for BNFL this is the radiation effects on workers that have worked there and retired, that are working there now and the offspring of workers to find out if radiation on workers affects their offspring. The two aspects of genetics that they use are cytogenetics and molecular genetics and this report is for AS level students.

Cytogenetics

Cytogenetics is the microscopic analysis of changes to chromosomes; they are a good biological marker as radiation affects chromosomes quite easily and leaves pretty obvious effects. Westlakes genetics department studies damages in workers exposed to radiation at work for BNFL. It has examined blood samples, blood lymphocytes or white blood cells from workers at Sellafield for many years. The blood samples are taken and placed in a culture medium and cultured for 48 hours at 37oC in a 5% carbon dioxide incubator. Cells that are in metaphase are taken and slides prepared for microscope analysis. Staining techniques are applied to the samples to determine the number of chromosome aberrations.

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Solid Staining

One form of staining is the solid staining technique which lets you see how many unstable chromosome aberrations there are but it is impossible to identify which chromosomes they came from. This staining technique is a good way to find out whether someone has had a recent exposure to radiation but it is ineffective to find out about radiation over long periods of time because the cells that contain the unstable chromosome aberrations cannot undergo repeated cell division and therefore they are not discovered in this method.

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