James McAfee Industrial placement student

It has been our pleasure to have James McAfee from Queens University Belfast, working with us in the Protein Science and Structural Biology department here at Sygnature over the last year. James looks back on his time and gives a glimpse of what his industrial placement was like.

I’m James and I’ve been the resident placement student over the last year at Protein & Structure and what a year it’s been! It feels like just a few weeks ago that I started, but looking around I’m reminded of how far I’ve come in what feels like a short space of time.

After a steep learning curve, I managed to get insect cells in suspension culture growing steadily (for the most part). After another steep learning curve, I found out that AKTAs are an incredibly useful tool rather than a nightmare of loops and valves. Of course, my SDS-PAGE loading time has significantly improved (though this wouldn’t have been hard). I could go on and on about the countless stories I’ve generated from painstakingly learning a multitude of techniques, but I feel you may not fancy reading a three-page essay. So, to summarise, learning and applying all of these techniques has been nothing if not incredibly enjoyable. Though none of this learning would have been possible without the excellent team of very talented (and very patient) scientists around me.

Soppiness aside, the thing I’ve enjoyed most is feeling like a truly proud dad to my proteins. Whether they’re being sent into the big bad world for functional assays, binding analysis or structural studies, I have always felt a sense of pride in the proteins I have produced.

Coming to the end of my placement (and this blog don’t worry) now and I’ll be sad to leave both the people and the proteins. However, for better or for worse I feel I will be soon returning to the proteins. So, if you’re looking for a PhD student and think a freshly trained undergraduate with a skill set in eukaryotic cell culture, a healthy respect for AKTAs, and a genuine enthusiasm for science would be a good addition to your lab, you know where to find me. (Perhaps via LinkedIn)