 I studied the function of aquaporins in plants. Aquaporins are tiny channels which are found in cell membranes and they help the transport of small molecules such as water, carbon dioxide, important for plant functioning across cell membranes. So here we're looking at a plant cell and we have fused, we've attached a green fluorescent protein to an aquaporin of interest. So we can use a laser attached to the confocal microscope to light up this green protein which acts, which glows in the dark and acts as a bit like a torch which is able to guide us and tell us where the aquaporin is located. So in this case we see green all around the outside of the cell and that's because this specific aquaporin wants to integrate so it goes into the exterium, the plasma membrane and all this green that we see is lots of tiny little aquaporins which are found in the plasma membrane. So with the confocal microscope we're able to get really high resolution and sharp images of living cells and so this is a great advantage to us because we're interested in knowing where the aquaporins go within the cell and depending on where an aquaporin is found within the cell this has implications on its function. So if it's on the outside or it's in internal membranes this has the aquaporin as different functions and part of my work is looks at the ciphering where these aquaporins are found and linking that to their function within the plant. So future applications of aquaporin research are quite varied so we're interested in aquaporins as they're really useful in genetic engineering tools in order to make more resilient crops to drought or more high yielding crops as well. So for example if a plant is able to transport important molecules such as water or carbon dioxide more efficiently throughout the plant it's able to do more photosynthesis and this would lead to higher yields.