Profile

I live in Bristol with my girlfriend, Ane ❤️. She is from Spain too and she also loves climbing big mountains 🏔. I lived in London for some time, but I did not like it very much, it is just too big for me. I then moved to Bristol to work at the University. Before that, I lived 5 years in the Arctic ❄️❄️, very close to Santa’s home, literally!! 🎅🤫 I love the winter, the snow and the northern lights 🐳❄️☃️🌌. My favourite animal is the polar bear so I have a deep connection with all sort of Arctic things.

Camels can survive as long as 3 weeks without drinking a single droplet of water and that is truly fascinating. Many scientists have investigated how these animals do that and they discovered a lot of tricks they got to save water.

You know what? Many people think that camels have the hump full of water, but that isn’t true. The hump is made of fat, like the white stuff of the bacon! And they can convert that fat into water when they are thirsty. In fact, you can too, but camels are much better than people doing that. They can as well drink a lot of water when they are thirsty, and I mean a lot! The record is held by a camel that drank 300 litres of water in only 10 minutes!! We could never do that.

There are many more characteristics like these that you can ask me. I am personally interested in the kidneys. This organ that is very close to your stomach is super important for the camels because it helps to save water. In my case, I study the genes of the kidney. Genes are like instruction booklets, small pieces of information that tell our body what to do in every single moment of our life, even when we are asleep, that is why they are extremely important and when they fail things can go wrong. We need them to live. Similarly, the camels have their own genes, many of them, very similar to ours. However, in the kidney of the camel there are many many thousands of genes and it is very difficult to know what every single gene does at one time. Ohhh… and they are invisible!!! This task is getting complicated!!

I use very complex machines to look at the genes that are important for the camel and very big and powerful computers to discover what those genes do and when. That helps us to understand the instructions of a thirsty camel. This is important to make sure that camels will be able to happily live in the future and that is important because many people use camels to produce milk and meat, exactly as we use cows and pigs.

My typical day also includes some meetings with my workmates and my boss. Generally, I would get to the office early and have a chat with my colleagues to discuss what sort of experiments I will do in the day. Many times, experiments in the lab require a lot of waiting time and that is a fantastic opportunity to read and learn from other scientists. I would typically spend at least 2 hours reading. Then I pick up the results from my experiments and try to understand them, try to understand why that is happening. It is very important for me to write down my thoughts because otherwise I will forget them. In that way, other scientists can learn from me as well, it is a team effort.