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Proteins (and shorter chains of amino acids called ‘peptides’) have many interesting roles living things. Making them in a lab is very useful, as often it’s only when you can change certain bits of the protein (such as swapping certain amino acids with others) that you can work out which parts of the protein’s structure are important.

I use chemical reactions to make peptides and proteins, which gives me complete control over their sequence and helps biologists to research them in more detail.

I spend a lot of time using a machine called a ‘synthesizer’ which can react amino acids together. There’s a picture of it below. I make up solutions of each amino acid and put them in each of the bottles you can see. Then I type in the sequence of the protein I want and the synthesizer can (hopefully!) make it for me. I have to be careful I don’t make any typos!