Hello this video is going to be about interviews for Biology. So I'm Dr Beth Mortimer and I'm a research fellow in the Department of Zoology. Hello my name is Dr Jonathan Green and I am a lecturer in the Department of Zoology as well and a junior research fellow at New College. So ... when you come ... for your interview ... for ... biology you will be ... having interviews ... with at least, or have at least two interviews ... in separate colleges and so the aim of what we want to do today is to kind of ... give you a taster of what those interviews are like ... and give you a bit of a feel for what we're looking for, how you should best use that time as well, ... and then you'll see a kind of ... live interview in action. So I'll hand back over to Beth now. So of course as you already know we look at the rest of your application but in the interview we're particularly looking for evidence of your interest in biology, so can you tell us about something that's written on your personal statement ... or other topics that interest you in biology, we'll be looking for that. So secondly your ability to engage in conversation about biology related subjects, so of course we're going to ask you questions but also feel free to ask questions to us as well, and engage in that two-way discussion about these biological topics. So thirdly how you respond when given additional pieces of information. So it may well be that we don't give you much information at the start but we may give you more as the interview goes on, so we'll be looking at how you respond to that. And linked to that then, how you respond when you're confronted with things that you don't immediately know the answer to, it's not actually about the right answers, but we're looking for evidence for how you think through problems. So that's what we're looking for ... during your interview process and what we're going to do now is do a mock interview as an example of the types of questions we might ask you to see how you think.

Welcome to this interview for Biology, and so my name's Dr Beth Mortimer, I'm a research fellow in the Department of Zoology and this is my colleague. Hi Sophie I'm Dr Jonathan Green, I also work in the Zoology Department. Great, so what we're going to do, nice to meet you, what we're going to do today Sophie is just ask you a few questions to gauge your interest in biology and how you think through biological topics, so don't worry at all if initially you don't know what the answer is, if you want more time feel free to take all the time you need, and ask us questions. And it's all about knowing how you think about things so feel free to think out loud for us. So your first question, ... just a very general one, why are you interested in studying biology? I'm mainly interested because I feel like it has such, it's such a broad ... science with so many applications in different areas and I feel like especially where we are now it's really exciting in terms of, like, with how much ... other disciplines have come on, like so the impact of like computing in biology etc and all these different ... I think it's just a really interesting time to be a biologist because there are so many different applications that you can be considered for like solving the world's problems like what's been going on with Covid as well as like climate change, I think it ... offers some like very novel perspectives.

Great, so yeah Sophie following on from that then I wondered if you could give me ... some examples of ... sort of biological advances that have really excited you in the past year or so, things that you've heard about and been excited about? Yeah of course, so ... I mean not that Covid was something to be excited about but like I feel like Covid has been really interesting in terms of ... because you do some like ... immunology and disease work at school, and how vaccine programs, but it's been really interesting to see this play out on like a global scale I guess, with ... seeing not just the science behind it but also like people's attitudes towards ... things which you kind of learn as like ... distinctly good or this is what happens and seeing how it's actually all worked out, and also in terms of ... the different solutions for ... vaccine development and also like in terms of kind of different ways of solving ... the virus there's been some really interesting like publications and stuff about how they've like attempted to ... de-optimize like codon usage for Covid which I thought was a really interesting way to go about ... yeah trying to trigger immune responses. Excellent, thank you. Great, so what we're going to do now Sophie, is we're going to move on to your first detailed question, so I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to try and share my screen so fingers crossed all going well you should see a PowerPoint slide. Okay can you see my screen at all? Yes I think so. Right is that now full screen? Basically, yeah. Great okay, so what I'm going to do I'm going to play this video twice and what I'm going to ask you to do after it's played through twice, is just describe what you see in the video okay? Right I'll start playing it now let me know if you can't see the screen move for any reason.

Okay that's the end of the video, I'll play it again for you Sophie okay?

I'll just try and unshare my screen.

There we go, hopefully I'm not sharing my screen anymore. Right would you like to describe to me what you saw ... in that video please? Yeah okay, so the video appeared to show ... a heard of elephants kind of in their natural habitat, it looked like ... an African savannah, ... and it showed them grouped with the adults around the outside and with the ... the younger more vulnerable members in the middle which is because they were kind of hidden from view until you saw the elephant start to move a bit, and then at the end you have a complete breakaway of ... some of the adults and some of the young then follow off in different directions. Something seems to almost startle them. But at the start where ... at the start of the video it really did look as if ... they were showing, kind of just a herding, almost like protective, slightly um showing I felt it seemed a bit like they were the adult ... elephants were almost in a kind of aggressive stance, I want to say, because they were showing, they were moving their ... their legs up and down, they were like making themselves look a lot bigger, they were hiding the more vulnerable, so there might be something that had ... set them on edge or scared them maybe, potentially a predator or something like that. Oh wonderful, okay so let's go back to what you said about the startle response. Was there anything specifically that changed in their behaviour over that video that's made you say about the startling? Yeah it's just the main difference where at the start they were all kind of huddled with the adults facing outwards which implies some sort of protective stance and behaviour, and they're flapping, sorry, they're flapping their ears quite a lot as well, which is ... I think it can be used to like, as a way of cooling down, but in that particular setting of how the they are ... facing it looks more like it's making themselves look a lot bigger. Can you summarize the changes in behaviour over the video? Yeah so they're all standing outside but then suddenly ... something must happen, maybe a visual cue, or an or audio cue, which makes them all startle, where they suddenly break out of their protective herd unit into individuals running away. Okay great, so we've got that kind of breaking up ... of the herd and as you said you got some behaviours at the beginning that perhaps change throughout. So at one point they kind of freeze and look around and they kind of hold their ears out, a lot more stationary, before moving out. So you've started to think there in your answer about what might explain that behaviour that you've observed, so what do you think might most likely explain that change in behaviour?

Do you mean the change where they all start to break away? Yeah so what do you think might have happened?

For it to be something that big I would say, I'm inclined to say, it could be ... like the viewing of ... a predator, but considering how big elephants are and they're in such a large group that I'm, I don't think, I'm not sure how likely it would be that it is, because I feel like they could defend against it, because most of the predators are a lot smaller than an elephant, or even like a pride of lions ... so it might be more kind of ... something that they're hearing, so more audio based, so it might be like, oh it might have something to do with poaching actually, it could be like... a gunshot for example. Okay great. Something like that maybe. Yeah, you've mentioned a couple of different types of cues there then, so you said it might be a visual cue might be an acoustic cue, and you've mentioned both kind of predators and perhaps humans as well, as being the kind of source of that. Do you want to pick one of those, and ... can you tell me how you might design a field experiment to test that hypothesis, so for example if you thought it was a visual cue of a predator, how would you test whether that was what was causing the change in behaviour? So you would, I guess, have different groups where you'd look and see whether it is in fact ... so you could have like, I don't know, you could make a, you could make a representation I guess of the predator, like a kind of life-size cut out or something, and you could place this in their area and see how long it takes for them to notice it and what their response is, ... to see whether they displayed this breakaway behaviour. Great, so you could have a manipulation where you could try and recreate that, ... what about any controls we need to think about, any other comparison groups here? Yes so ... you could do a control of ... where you don't have this, and where you don't have the, ... let's pretend it's like a lion like manipulation that we're doing, you could have one where you don't have this but then you could also have one where you have different types of animals, and also you might have a zebra for example maybe they've if they display the same behaviour when you have like a different representation there compared to none at all, and the one that you're intending to look at. What are the benefits of having both of those controls? So one of them, so the one where it kind of shows whether there's ... the one where you don't have a cut-out for example, that kind of looks at whether there is a difference at all of whether ... it happens even when there's nothing there, and then where you have one for say a zebra for example, instead of when you're looking at lion, it's asking is there something about the lion or the zebra particularly which causes this response, or is it just anything in their vicinity that they can pick up that looks like another animal, ... that's causing them to startle? Great really interesting Sophie, so actually if I'd played that video to you ... with the sound on what you would have heard about 10 seconds into the video would have been the sound of bees, so how can we link that to the behaviour that we've seen in the video?

So if it's bees I guess that maybe it's to do with where they're standing as well, because they were standing underneath the tree, so it might be that ... they're standing quite aggressively because they can just hear the sound which they might associate ... just through learnt behaviour, with ... being stung, and that inflicting a pain response which they want to avoid, so they might stand there and then one of them might get stung which might cause all of them to break away because it might be like a herd movement, where one jumps out position and they all think that the other one seems something so they all then break out. Great, excellent, do you find that surprising, that it's bees?

Slightly, it's not what my mind initially went to, but I guess it makes sense. Yeah wonderful thank you so much Sophie, so yeah the elephants actually ... will retreat to the sound of bees, and as you've said in your answer there, it is ... something that that they've learned in terms of ... they can actually be stung kind of within their trunk and within their ears so they are actually quite vulnerable to these bees and they they do retreat to the sound of it. Well thank you very much for your response Sophie, that's all that I want to talk about with this, but now I'm going to hand back over to Jonathan and he's going to ask you a different type of question okay. Thank you. I'm gonna show you a ... a series of images now and we're gonna work through a biological problem, so i'll be sharing my screen the whole time okay? Okay.

Okay can you see this? Um yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Great. Okay, so we've gone down into the depths of the ocean and of course here we have ... lights from a submersible inspecting a wreck. Now other than these lights, that's produced by this ... this submersible, is the ocean ... in the depths entirely dark do you think? I think it's pretty close to being almost entirely dark ... mainly because I've seen some images of various organisms that live down there and lots of them don't appear to have very well developed like ... like optic sensors I guess ... but at the same time I'm sure there might be some light that permeates down ... but probably not a lot I think, would be the answer. So so you know at a certain depth, no, there's no downwelling light anymore, but there is another source of light so you're exactly right a lot of organisms have lost their eyes but a lot of them actually have quite large eyes, so there there is some light from somewhere that they're picking up and using. Can you think what the source of that light might be if it's not the sun?

Could it be like created by other organisms ... yeah? Exactly, yes, yeah and what do we call that do you know? Fluorescence? ... So bioluminescence. Ah yeah. Okay so here are some ... nice examples of bioluminescence on ... fish and squid. So overwhelmingly in the deep sea if animals produce ... light, it's blue, okay, ... as shown by these creatures. Can you think for me why ... bioluminescence tends to be blue?

It might be to do with the ... cones that might be, so the ... the cells which pick up the like cells that are in the eyes of most of these marine organisms that are able to pick up the light, it might just be the sort of ... the sort of colour which ... the majority of these ... marine dwelling creatures have, so it makes more sense if they're trying to be picked up by other creatures, just might be evolutionary. Yeah yeah okay, so I certainly agree that if lots of receivers are sensitive to blue light then that's what you should produce. Now why it should be blue in the first place though, you know, why they should have sensitivity to that, so a bit a big advantage of blue light is that it ... the shorter wavelengths it travels ... much further in the water so it's a better signal in terms of transmission than longer wavelengths like red light for example. Okay so that neatly brings us on to a very strange organism. This is the head of a dragon fish called Malacosteus, and hopefully you can see just below the eye there's a little red mark, yeah? Yeah. Now this in fact is ... a light emitting organ that emits red light, so having told you that almost everything in the deep sea is ... communication is by a blue light, and as you've correctly guessed, visual sensitivities are to blue, the blue part of the spectrum, then why on earth would a fish produce red light?

It could be to deal with it's, it might be a method of predation for this because the ... you said that the red light doesn't travel as fast so potentially this ... the dragon fish was it it might ... hunt by more ambushing and then or like sudden start predation where it just lies pretty motionless and then as soon as something comes close to it which might then be able to see the red light and might be ... visually stimulated by it so it might move closer to it try and see what it is or just ... and then this dragon fish might just ... suddenly come out of nowhere and ambush it and eat it. Okay, so you're definitely along the right lines, it is an ambush predator, but ... for that to work well obviously you don't want to reveal your presence at all ... so this red light doesn't work as a lure, in fact what's happening is that the fish is producing a red light that only it can see, okay, so it's lighting up the environment immediately in front of it and if there's another sort of little prey fish close by it can hone in on that and catch it, but without that prey fish ever knowing that it's there because it can't detect the red light. It's like a predator-style ... hunting ... strategy okay. Now if we look at the jaws and the teeth what do you think this fish is specialized to catch, very generally, what what kind of prey? Probably some other fish, judging by...

Yeah, judging by what sorry? What would you say? Oh no I was just saying it seems to have ... it seems to have quite a large like jaw which looks like it can detach slightly it's massive and ... it's got really big teeth as well which implies that it needs like quite a firm. and quite a few of them. implies it might need quite a firm grip. so it's probably not like kind of more detritus that it's eating implies it might be catching live prey. Excellent excellent, and that is exactly what you think isn't it, so here is the dragon fish in a drawing extending those jaws to catch some ... smaller prey fish. Now the interesting thing when ... researchers have gotten hold of these fish occasionally and looked at the stomach contents, there's actually a large proportion of what they eat isn't ... these small fish that they seem very well designed to catch, in fact they are also eating a large number of these small crustaceans, these copepods.

And they're really inefficient at doing that as you can imagine, ... you know the jaws aren't built for it, they have gaps between the teeth, behind the jaws and everything, so they're inefficient copepod hunters but they do go around eating a lot of them. Okay I'm gonna leave that with you for a second and we're going to look at something a little bit different

So

We've met a fish that produces red light and we've discussed the fact that almost all organisms are sensitive to blue light at that depth. Now that dragon fish

... the cones in its eyes ... the proteins that that dragon fish can ... produce itself to put in those cones they are not sensitive to red light, okay, so just like all the other fish in terms of what the dragon fish itself can produce in its eyes it has a sensitivity to blue light but not red light. Okay. Okay, seems weird. Do you recognize this spectrum at all does this ring any bells? Somewhat, it looks like a lot like an absorption spectrum, so it's just showing like a what percentage different wavelengths of light are absorbed. Exactly yes it is an absorption spectrum perfect. Do you, could you even hazard a guess what pigment this absorption spectrum might be for?

Well it seems to be absorbing really strongly at the ... blue and red region which implies that it's like emitting at the green region so maybe something that, in that green region? Can you think of a pigment that does that? ... Chlorophyll? Yeah yeah this is the exhaustion spectrum of chlorophyll. So I want you to take everything we've talked about, talked about a dragon fish that produces red light but its own eyes can't see red light, it hunts fish which it seems very well designed to build but it actually also eats lots of these tiny copepods

and here's a close-up picture of a copepod. I wonder if you can take all this information for me together and tell me what's going on with this system

Let me have a think. Of course.

Well it might be to do with something to do with the fact that like the copepods might have different visual sensitivity ... which might be why they seem to be more attracted to the ... the red light than we said the other marine organisms are, but the fact that we're talking about our chlorophyll is interesting because I can't see the dragon fish having anything to do with that, so it might be that the ... the copepods, was it ... they might have something to do with the chlorophyll in the sense that maybe

they feed on something, on some sort of organism that contains ... chlorophylls or some sort of plant and they might take this up ... they might be able to take up the chlorophyll pigment potentially. Perfect yeah so you're exactly right. So copepods ... forage on partly on plant matter contains chlorophyll that is then inside them, so what's what do you think's the final connection then, we've looked at the absorption spectrum for chlorophyll you told me to absorb strongly in the blue and the red

Yes. Okay and we know that the dragon fish emits red light. Yeah. But in terms of the proteins itself that it is able to produce it can only, see, absorb blue light.

Yeah not entirely sure to be honest. Okay no worries, no you've done very well indeed. So the final little sort of explanation for this is that the dragon fish actually uses chlorophyll. It puts chlorophyll inside its eyes which then allows it to absorb the red light that it's emitting, so effectively the dragonfish need to eat these copepods in order to see, to be able to eat, in order to be able to see to eat, so it's a weird circular... It's very cool though. Yeah it is very cool. Okay thank you very much I'll stop sharing now.

Great well done Sophie, so that is the end of your interview, you'll be happy to hear. So normally we would tell you, we would tell you about what's coming up next and whether you know what kind of your next interview arrangements are along those lines, but in this case this is all that you've got for today, so thank you very much for your time and it was lovely to meet you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

So in this little section now we will ... having seen ... the mock interview ... with Sophie we'll ... just reflect on some of the ... things ... that ... some of the sort of hints and tips for how to kind of succeed ... in these interviews. So ... I suppose ... we opened with some general questions to Sophie about ... her interest in biology and ... that's something that you can expect, that's you know very typical, we want to gauge ... applicants interest in the subject of course. To an extent of course where we're helped very much by ... the personal statement and so you should definitely expect .. the interviewers to ask you questions about your personal statement. Make sure you know everything ... that's in that statement are things that you're prepared and happy to talk about, so in terms of things that you might have read, or experience you might have got in different places, ... and do be prepared to go into some detail okay, we want to hear your ... you know we want to hear some detailed thoughts from you on ... things like the ... aspects of biology that you find really interesting, why exactly that is, and what's really motivating you to come to study this subject. Okay I'll hand over to Beth now. Great yeah in terms of the detailed questions ... obviously Sophie did very well, and it's worth bearing in mind that she did have a year of biological study already under her belt when she was asking this, so as examples of that she was giving us some scientific terms which we might not necessarily expect an A level student to know, for example in my question she was talking about associative learning, so that's a specific type of learning, ... but in general what she was very good at was asking for time to think. and do do that in your interview if you need time to think. ask for time to do that. I think what she didn't do, which can be very helpful, is also to ask questions. So if you're not sure what the question is asking ... or if you want a bit more information, so for example perhaps in Jonathan's question she could have summarized what she'd already talked about or she could have asked a question where she really wasn't sure. In my question you'd notice at one point I kind of interrupted her a little bit. We don't generally like to do that but we will do that if time is getting short so for example I specifically wanted to know about changes in behaviour over the question, so I did have to interrupt her, remind her again what I'd asked, so make sure when you are answering questions where you can try and answer the questions specifically, rather than going off talking about other things that are interesting, and don't be think that it means anything if we interrupt you it's usually because time is short and we need to make sure that we stay on topic. But otherwise on my question I thought she did a really good job going through the specific questions I asked, and again it's just thinking out loud: I wasn't judging on right or wrong answers from the questions I had, but how she could think through the problem out loud and deal with that new information. Right handing back to Jonathan for anything else to add. So I would say ... that ... as Beth described for her own question, that all of those things ... apply to my own as well. Sophie did an extremely good job, it doesn't matter that say that there's a final ... sort of level of wrapping off of the question .. that we didn't quite get to. These questions are often designed to have quite a lot of steps to them, and they can go off in different directions, so it's really just about being able to sustain a good discussion, and ... as Beth said to ask questions, but really crucially also just to take the time to think and just try to take a moment to be calm, and you can, you know, you can ask for a bit of time, you can ask your interviewers to rephrase or clarify their questions. I think other than that .. yeah that's probably all the tips from me. Great. In terms of how this might differ between different tutors or at different colleges ... generally speaking you will get these types of detailed questions from the different tutors, but as well as just having maybe one general question and two questions here, ... there may be more, more than that depending on the college and the tutor, but generally speaking you'll either be given an object perhaps, or a graph, a piece of data, a video, so all of these are different starting points for discussion but as we've said at the top when describing what we're looking for it's really your problem solving ability, ability to engage in conversation with us and how you deal with that new information or if you're presented with something that you don't know. So that's generally how the interviews go for Biology.