Question: Hi i was just in a chat with you and i didn't get to ask this question. What made you want to study the development of fish organs?

Martin Minarik answered on 10 Nov 2023:

Hi Hannah! It was a bit of a coincidence. I was always interested in the evolution of vertebrates and what you can learn about it by studying animal embryos – I studied embryos of various fishes and amphibians for my PhD. Then just when I was about to finish my PhD I met someone at a conference who organized a seminar in Cambridge, and they invited me to give a presentation there, and that’s where I met my current boss, who studies the lateral line organs in fishes. She offered me my current job and I agreed because it sounded really interesting – not just learning about these organs, but all the methods I was supposed to learn which I didn’t use during my PhD, such as switching off genes in the embryo and then looking at the effects it has. Many of my colleagues either pick their jobs after a PhD to work on an animal they really like, or to learn some cool techniques they can then use in other animals. Mine was a mixture of both 🙂 But I wouldn’t mind studying flies or something else for a bit as long as the experiments are fun and ideally have something to do with evolution 🙂