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EVALUATING EXPERIMENTS

Ho ho ho homeobox

There are some concepts in biology that are best learned through problem-solving. Designing appropriate experiments and interpreting data is a good example of this. Here, geneticist Kevin O’Dell takes you on an imaginary journey to the North Pole

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It is the opportunity of a lifetime and you are beyond excited. You listened to your university lecturers and applied early to secure a summer research internship at a very prestigious research institute. Now you are about to board a flight to the University of the North Pole where, so you have been promised, it will be glorious sunshine 24 hours a day. However, what nobody told you is that the temperature rarely rises above 8°C.

On your arrival you are met by Santa’s wife, Mrs Claus. It transpires that she is the lead researcher at the University of the North Pole, where she is better known as the world-renowned geneticist Professor Holly Anne Ivy Claus. She explains that the North Pole settlement is in crisis because they are unable to grow any crops outside because it is too cold. This means that they have to import all their food, which is becoming prohibitively expensive. To address this, some of the University of the North Pole researchers are trying to develop cold-tolerant crops.

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Sand dunes

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Biobanks