Dr Harding's research focusses on Huntington’s disease (HD) which is caused by a mutation in the huntingtin gene leading to neurodegeneration. Using biochemistry and structural biology methodologies Dr Harding is studying the how the mutation in the gene affects the resultant mutant protein structure, potentially pointing towards a disease mechanism. These are many challenging questions that despite many years of research in many laboratories, so far have not been answered fully. Dr Harding uses an open lab notebook for her huntingtin structure-function project through the blog labscribbles.com and the data repository Zenodo. Dr Harding hopes that by sharing data widely and more quickly than is normally done in biomedical science, she can catalyze research on this disease. Dr Harding will discuss why she keeps my online notebook, the pros and cons which other researchers might take heed of before embarking on their own open science missions, but most importantly the opportunities which it has opened up scientifically and otherwise.
