A day in the life: Dr Syabira Yusoff

05:00

If I’m working on a new recipe, I’ll get up at 5am to start making it. Usually I plan out how I am going to do it the night before. I write down notes so I can switch off, have a good night’s sleep, and be ready to weigh out ingredients as soon as I’m up. Then, if it’s a pastry for example, I can leave the dough chilling in the fridge while I go to work.

08:30

On my commute into the lab where I work at King’s College London, I might look on the internet for baking inspiration, or read a book on combining flavours, to understand it better.

As a researcher, I’m used to gathering all the information I can before I do an experiment. I take the same approach to baking.

09:15

When I get to work, I put in my earphones and leave behind all thoughts of baking. My team’s research is focused on how, as we age, blood vessels get harder and stiffer because of calcium deposits. We know this is linked to developing high blood pressure and an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.

From previous research we know that when RUNX2 (a gene known to be involved in bone formation) is ‘switched on’ in blood vessels, they become calcified. But in real life, it’s never just one gene acting alone. So we’re trying to understand which other genes and proteins are involved in the hardening (calcification) of blood vessels. We can then look for drugs to help stop this process.

My brother has had heart problems since he was a teenager. I love doing research that could help people like him

In the lab, we add calcifying chemicals to cells taken from human blood vessels. We then watch them harden over 10 to 12 days. This mimics what happens in real life in blood vessels over many years, or decades. We take DNA and other samples from the cells on different days. This way we can understand which genes are ‘switched on’ and which proteins are present at different stages of the hardening process.

11:30

I eat early so I’m often having lunch when other researchers are having coffee. Sometimes I’ll bring in my cakes for others to try. Lunch is typically leftover curry, rice, or noodles that I made for dinner the night before.

12:15

I specialise in bioinformatics, which means using computer programmes to understand biology. When I first started, I was studying plants. But I’ve always I wanted to get experience working on human bioinformatics. My brother has had heart problems since he was a teenager, and I wanted to focus on an area of science close to my heart. I love doing research that could help people like him.

If I finish my lab work in the morning, I’ll spend the afternoon analysing the results. For example, DNA is made from four different molecules known by their first letters: A, C, G and T. If you watched me in Bake Off, you might have seen the DNA cake I made, with these letters on.

In any sample taken from our experiments, there may be tens of thousands of these letters. At first, it’s not clear what they mean. Imagine that the DNA is Latin, and you have a whole library’s worth of it. My job is to translate this ‘Latin’ with computer programmes into something understandable.

18:30

When I get home I’ll shape the dough I made earlier, add fillings, bake it, and decorate it.

Baking can be a bit like therapy, a chance to unwind from the research. When you’re doing research, it takes a long time to find answers, and experiments often don’t go to plan. But baking has taught me, you can’t control everything. Sometimes things just don’t work.

And when I do achieve a good bake, however small a success it is, it gives me confidence to go back and tackle research questions that I haven’t solved yet.

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