Author Archives: Paula

Science Minister visits Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology

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by Dr Heath Murray 

On June 27 the RH David Willetts MP, Minister for Universities and Science, visited the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology (CBCB) to hear about how research on bacteria can lead to: development of novel antibiotics, design of synthetic biological systems, and even understanding the origins of life on earth. Dr Heath Murray (CBCB & ICaMB) tells us more about this visit.

Mr. Willetts was given a guided tour of the new Baddiley-Clark building by the director of the CBCB, Prof Jeff Errington.

Jeff (left) outlines CBCB research to David Willetts (right), with Heath (middle back) paying close attention

Jeff discussed why he left Oxford University after 25 years to start the CBCB at Newcastle, the first Centre of its kind in the UK to provide a world-class facility in which to carry out fundamental research on bacterial cells. During the tour Jeff highlighted how the localised network of international researchers at the CBCB, working on biological problems in model bacterial organisms provides an unparalleled setting in which to exchange ideas and to benefit from related advances in microbial cell biology. While walking around Jeff noted how the open plan of the Baddiley-Clark building promoted interactions amongst the various research groups, thereby creating a uniquely stimulating environment for the scientists that work there.

This was a very fruitful visit with interesting discussions, as highlighted by Jeff: “I was impressed at how quickly the Minister picked up the key biological points we wanted to make, such as about how our work impacts on thinking about the origins of life!”

An image similar to those seen by David Willetts showing severe DNA segregation defect in a mutant Bacillus subtilis strain, observed using epifluorescent microscopy. (DNA: blue; origin of replication: green, cell membrane: red)

 

I then demonstrated the bespoke microscopes available within the CBCB to the Minister, highlighting how the small size of bacterial cells (only a few micrometers) makes microscopic analysis technically challenging and how the CBCB is utilizing state-of-the-art super-resolution microscopes to overcome this difficulty. I also explained how researchers use genetic engineering to fuse their “proteins of interest” to the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria, thus creating tools to visualize the localization of proteins or nucleic acids within living bacterial cells using fluorescence microscopy.

 

Heath explains the potential applications of the research to the Science Minister

 

The Minister was keen to see the live demonstration of our fluorescent microscope and seemed amazed by how clearly the organization of the bacterial chromosomes was immediately apparent. He quickly appreciated that interfering with this process might have application in the development of new antibiotics.

 

 

We were all left with the clear feeling that Mr. Willetts enjoyed hearing about the science taking place within the CBCB and how this fundamental research provides insights crucial for the discovery and development of new antibiotics, as well as providing solutions to a wide range of industrial and environmental problems. “It was an interesting meeting – very reassuring to hear that the Minister is keen to make sure that Government continues to invest in Blue-Skies Research”, Jeff concluded.

 

British Society for Medical Mycology meeting – on fungal pathogens and the mycobiome

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We’ve all heard about the human microbiome, a term usually referring to the bacterial organisms inhabiting the human body and its interactions with our bodies. Research published in Nature this week focuses on an often neglected part of our microbiome:  the rich fungal community, ie, the mycobiome! So this is the perfect time to highlight the annual meeting of the British Society for Medical Mycology hosted by Newcastle University in April.

 

The meeting was organised by ICaMB’s Julian Rutherford, Julian Naglik (King’s College London) and Riina Richardson (BSMM treasurer, Manchester University) with excellent support from Adam O’Neill. Julian Rutherford and Jan Quinn tell us what happened.

 

 

 

by Julian Rutherford & Jan Quinn

Candida albicans infection of oral mucosa - an example of nasty fungal infections

The BSSM meeting is the premier conference in the UK for researchers studying human fungal infections. These fungi can cause a wide range of infections, ranging from ‘thrush’ to severe systemic infections acquired in hospitals.

It was great to host this meeting in Newcastle this year and very gratifying that, with almost 100 delegates, this was the best attended meeting in recent years. However, the meeting got off to a somewhat interesting start as both national and international leaders in the medical mycology field arrived at Newcastle just as Sunderland beat ‘The Toon’ 3-0. It took some explaining, especially to our international colleagues, why there were more police than people on the streets of Newcastle… We were particularly pleased to welcome Professor El Sheik Mahgoub (University of Khartoum) who was present at the first BSMM annual meeting 49 years ago.

Reflecting the diverse nature of the BSMM membership, poster presentations and talks covered all aspects of Medical Mycology, including genomics, systems biology; cool tools and new infection models; pathogenicity mechanisms; and fungal immunity. Newcastle labs were well represented with Jan Quinn chairing a session, and 5 presentations from post-docs and PhD students from the Quinn and Lilic groups.

One of the most entertaining talks was given by Prof David Underhill, who highlighted the importance of fungi within the human microbiome (an aspect us fungal fanatics often find neglected!). Not only did his data clearly support the presence of a rich fungal community in the gut – the “mycobiome” – but that colonisation with specific fungal species can trigger immune responses and consequently inflammatory diseases such as colitis.

We were also treated to some amazing 3D images of the fungal infection process in a whole animal model  by Simon Johnston.

Visualising the progression of cryptococcosis infection using zebrafish. Cryptococci are expressing GFP (green) and zebrafish are labelled for filamentous actin (red).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lars Erwig also provided amazing visualisation of fungal infections with his images of C. albicans infecting macrophages:

Candida (top right, budding cell) infecting a macrophage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, the pinnacle of the meeting was the Foundation lecture given by Scott Filler. Scott has led the field in understanding Candida albicans invasion of host cells which is a key to this fungal pathogen causing life threatening systemic infections. Highlights of his talk included the identification of the invasins that induce human host cells to take up the fungus and the generation of an anti-Candida vaccine raised against one of these invasions that protects mice from systemic Candida infections.

As in previous years, one session consisted of talks by PhD students with Shirley Tang (King’s College London) taking home the £100 prize money for best student talk with her presentation on the role of the Candida albicans protein Ece1 in damaging oral epithelial cells. The prize for best student poster was awarded to Robert Evans (University of Birmingham) for his poster describing his work on the role of phospholipase B in cryptococcal pathogenesis.

The Sing Song Book!

 

The meeting is also a very social event: the annual dinner was a great success with BSMM president Chris Kibbler giving his usual entertaining after dinner speech. This was followed by the traditional sing-song led by Professor Frank Odds on piano and a few croaky voices at the sessions the following day! As usual, few could resist joining in on the all time favourite Bohemian Rhapsody!

Prof Frank Odds with the lead singers (left) and an enthusiastic chorus (left)

 

 

This year the meeting concluded with a Career Workshop for Medical Mycologists, sponsored by the Wellcome Trust Strategic Award for Medical Mycology and Fungal Immunology, of which Newcastle University is a consortium member. Jan Quinn gave (honest!) advice on the post-doc to PI transition, and there were also talks on non-academic and clinical career paths. This was finished by an interactive CV writing session led by Prof. Al Brown from Aberdeen University – ‘photographs on CVs?’ was a heavily debated point! And the agreed view was: don’t include them! What do you think – please let us know by adding a comment!

This was a very successful meeting and it will surely be remembered by those attending. For all those interested in fungal pathogens – see you next year!

More details on BSMM: 

The BSMM has approximately 350 members from all over the British Isles, Europe and the USA and includes clinicians, clinical scientists and research scientists. The Newcastle meeting was the last to be held with Chris Kibbler as BSMM president. Professor Rosemary Barnes (Cardiff) takes over as president and the 50th BSMM meeting will be held in Manchester.

 

Links

British Society of Medical Mycology: http://www.bsmm.org/

Wellcome Trust Strategic Award for Medical Mycology and Fungal: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/mmfi/

 

 

Why PAN!C?

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ICaMB’s PhD and Master students now have their own Network – PAN!C. Here they tell us about the network, its aims and activities so far, as well as plans for the future.

by the PAN!C committee

The idea for a Postgraduate Network in ICaMB – PAN!C – was conceived in Campus Coffee in November 2012 by Claire Whitworth and Kerrie Brusby in the hope of uniting the near 90 postgraduate students within the institute. Since then, the PAN!C committee has gained 5 more committee members: Beth Lawry, Monica Piatek, Jonathon Briggs, Max Temple and Adam Crawshaw. The aim of PAN!C is to strengthen the community of postgraduate students around the institute and, in particular, improve interactions between the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology and Medical School building laboratories, enhancing both the academic and social experiences of students within the institute.

Jeff’s talk for PAN!C

Our first academic event back in March and was a real success, with a strong turnout of over 50 students to a career talk given by Professor Jeff Errington. His talk was based on his journey from being a student through to becoming an academic at the very top of his field and balancing his thriving business ventures with the stresses of academia.

We are currently planning our next academic event, again about careers but from a new perspective, which we’ll have more information about soon. We are hoping over the next few months to invite more speakers and if you have any suggestions of whom you might like to hear from or a subject that you would like to see covered, please email us!

Over the past 4 months we’ve also had a number of social events ranging from pub quizzes to laser questing, events which have had a good turnout and positive feedback from students. We have plenty of more events up our sleeve so keep an eye out for emails and posters advertising them soon!

 

PAN!C are currently applying for support from the University so that we can have more great events in the future, particularly for academic events, such as talks, workshops and more. To help us obtain this support we would really appreciate it if you could complete our very short survey, it takes less than 2 minutes.

For any questions about PAN!C or to suggest an idea for an event, be it academic or social please get in touch  with the PAN!C committee. We want PAN!C to be all about the postgraduate students in the Institute so we want students to have influence on what we do, get involved with our events and have fun! We are really grateful for the support shown by students, academics and the institute as a whole and hope that this continues so that an even bigger PAN!C ensues.

 

Links

PAN!C: https://www.facebook.com/pages/PANIC/522401521125495?fref=ts
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biosciences: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/
Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology : http://www.ncl.ac.uk/cbcb/
PAN!C survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PLHLBHC

A personal overview of the Science is Vital “R&D to 0.8%” campaign

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by Paula Salgado

Science is Vital is a grass roots campaign of UK scientists and supporters of science who believe that a strong science base is vital to the UK’s economy and reputation. It launched its latest initiative to persuade the Government to increase investment in research and  development (R&D) in the 2015-16 budget, details of which will be announced on June 26. ICaMB’s blog own Paula Salgado, member of the Science is Vital Executive Committee, recalls the earlier campaigns and explains all about the current petition and ongoing survey.

Background

It all started in September 2010, when a speech by the then recently appointed BIS secretary, Vince Cable, and rumours from the Government suggested major cuts – up to 25-35% – could hit the science budget. That led Jenny Rohn to a call for action and many scientists and non-scientists responded.

I am happy and proud to say I was of the initial wave of supporters. In only a few hours, there’s a Facebook page, in next couple of days the domain was registered and a  page created: the Science is Vital campaign was born. From the first moment, there was a clear intent to make this campaign about a key point: cutting science funding is not good for the economy. For me, having taken part in many demonstrations and campaigns as a student back in Portugal, this was a crucial point that made believe this was a campaign with a difference.

Delivering Science is Vital petition with ~33K signatures to N.10 (Photo by Joe Dunckley)

 

A petition gathered over 33,000 signatures in roughly 6 weeks, including many notable scientists and public figures, as well as the support of many learned societies, patient organisations and other NGO groups.

 

 

Lobbying Parliament to protect Science Funding (2010)

 

The campaign also included letters to MPs and a parliamentary lobby session, where we had an opportunity to directly address the issues with our representatives.

 

 

Finally, the campaign culminated with a rally in front of the Treasury:

Scientists in white lab coats and many non-scientist supporters at the rally in October 2010

Stewarding at the rally

I was there, helping as a steward (still not sure how that happened!) and seeing a constant stream of white coats and many non-scientist supporters streaming from the tube station was a very memorable sight. I even met a Portuguese colleague that had also been in many of those demonstrations back home and we couldn’t help comparing the situations and behaviours.

The result: cash-freeze

Despite the massive support gathered in such a short period of time, many of those involved, including me, were still unsure of how successful we could be at avoiding cuts… When the announcements were made and it was revealed that the science budget would be frozen for the next 4 years, we felt relieved, happy. I must admit I was also surprised: this was the first campaign I had taken part that was somewhat successful!

However, this was clearly a bitter-sweet victory: we were protected from deep cuts, but a cash-freeze means at least a 10% reduction in real terms due to inflation alone and cuts of up to 50% in capital spending and in many departments R&D budgets meant this was not great news for science in the UK in the long term.

Inspired by this result, SiV has continued to campaign, focusing on issues such as Science Careers and I continued to volunteer and help when I could. Last summer, at the First AGM, I was elected to become a member of the Executive Committee and have therefore become more involved in all aspects of the campaign.

Reverse the decline in science funding – R&D to 0.8% campaign

Despite the welcomed injections of capital by the Government, that somewhat minimised the effects for specific areas, the effects of the cash-freeze and other cuts are already being felt. A recent study by CaSE (Campaign for Science and Engineering) clearly shows that, at the end of the spending review period (2014-15), there will still be a significant shortfall in science funding in real terms, estimated to be around .

This reduction is already having its effects in the research community and it must be reversed if the UK is to remain at the the forefront of scientific research.

Why a new campaign now?

As you might have heard, the Government is currently discussing a budget review for 2015-16, the results of which will be announced on June 26. There are many indicators of further cuts to announced so there is cause for concern. Despite reassurances from Vince Cable that science funding will be protected, we understand that the Treasury favours a continuation of the cash-freeze. This will continue the current decline and will send dangerous signals against long-term public investment in science.

Bringing in the big names

Our first question was: how can we raise awareness of this renewed threat to science funding and make sure there will be a public discussion on the issue? Getting renowned scientists in the UK to get involved was an obvious choice, and we spent a couple of weeks contacting them. At one point, I remember making the wild suggestion of cold emailing Prof Stephen Hawking, which other committee members thought was a good idea – I can’t tell you how surprised and delighted I when I got an email back, fully supporting the campaign!

So the campaign was launched with a letter in the Daily Telegraph signed by more than 50 prominent scientists in the UK, including Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, Brian Cox, Paul Nurse and ICaMB’s own Jeff Errington.

We are asking the Government to show a clear long-term commitment to science in UK and set a target to increase public investment in R&D to 0.8% GDP – the G8 average – so we will regain our leading position and compete more effectively with the leading economies of the world.

Public spending in R&D as a percentage of GDP (via scienceogram.org)

Science funding in UK needs your help

Now, it’s your turn to help and support us.

We want to prepare a report, detailing the effects of the current cash-freeze is already having in the research community and alerting the Government for the dangers in pursuing the current policy of managed declined. For that, we need data. So please take our survey and tell us what you think.

We have prepared a public petition and ask you all to sign it. Importantly, we need to spread the word. As in 2010, we have used social media networks to tell people about the campaign. So please, sign it and tell everyone you know.

Also, you can write to your MP to get them involved in the discussion.

Science in UK needs you now. We only have a few weeks to get this important message across: Science is Vital for the UK.

 

A scientific note:

 

60 years ago today,  a ground breaking discovery was printed in Nature:

James Watson and Francis Crick published their proposed DNA structure, based on X-ray data collected by Rosalind Franklin, then working with Maurice Wilkins. There is hardly a need to explain the immense impact this paper had in science, medicine and our views of the world.

The fact that this was carried out in UK labs, with public funding, is one of the many examples of excellence in UK science.

 

We can not let this leading position be eroded, so what better way to celebrate it than join a campaign to help reverse science funding?

 

Science is Vital http://scienceisvital.org.uk/
R&D 0.8% campaign http://scienceisvital.org.uk/latest/
CaSE http://sciencecampaign.org.uk/

Postgraduate Newsbite I

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One of the aims of our blog is to make it a forum to share what is happening, so this week we focus on upcoming events important for our postgraduate students.

Firstly, the Postgraduate Research Symposium is taking place on Monday, 25th. This is a unique opportunity for all of us to hear more about the exciting research being carried out by our students. It’s also a great occasion for the students, a chance for them to share their work with the whole Institute and practice those ever important presentation skills.

So please come and show your support on Monday 25th March, 9.30 to 4.30, in Lecture Theatre D. Don’t forget you also get a chance to meet the students over lunch, provided in the Boardroom. We will also cover details of the day in our Blog next week – so come back then to find out more!

ICaMB’s Postgraduate association, PAN!C, start their academic events this afternoon at 4pm, in the Baddiley-Clark seminar room.  ICamBlog regular Jeff Errington will be giving a “Careers talk” where he will discuss his own experiences in academia and in setting up two spin out companies from his research. MRes, PhD students and Postdocs are all welcome.

Also, next Wednesday, 27th March, PAN!C social events continue with a pub quiz at Mr Lynch in Jesmond at 8.30pm.

We will soon hear about their plans for future events, so watch this space for more news from PAN!C.

Jeff Errington Wins Novartis Medal

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Congratulations to ICaMB‘s Professor Jeff Errington, who has just been awarded the prestigious Biochemical Society Novartis Medal and Prize for 2014.

The Novartis Medal and Prize is an annual award that recognises contributions to the development of any branch of biochemistry. Work leading up to the award must be carried out in the UK but is open to all nationalities. A list of previous winners can be seen here. A full list of the 2014 prize winners is here.

Jeff moved to Newcastle in 2005 where he became Director of ICaMB before standing down in 2012.  He founded the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology (CBCB) in 2007, which has since become a world leading centre for microbial research with a strong interest in aiding the discovery of the next generation of antibiotics.  Jeff’s lab is best known for its ground breaking work on the bacterial cell cycle and cell morphogenesis.  On the ICaMB blog we recently highlighted his Cell paper on L-form bacteria and insights into primordial cell division.

This is the video where Jeff describes the work in this paper

Early work from the Errington lab led to the formation in 1998 of  Prolysis, an antibacterial drug discovery company, which was recently acquired by an international anti-infectives company Biota Pharmaceuticals Inc.  More recently, a Newcastle University spin out company Demuris Ltd has been established to exploit drug screening opportunities emerging from the Errington lab.

In ICaMB, we are all delighted that Jeff’s work has received this recognition.  Above all it proves that you can achieve success in science while still being a a great guy who loves his beer and football.

 

An academic viewpoint on social media portals

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by PHIL ALDRIDGE

We are, as a society, becoming inundated with comments that fall in to categories such as “did you see X on Facebook” or “Have you had a sneaky peek at that viral video?” and news articles such as this one. Here what I would like to do is pass on some of my own impressions and experiences of the benefits of using social media, focusing on Twitter and LinkedIN.

Take home message: SCIENCE COMMUNICATION!

Yes, simply said, the impact science can make through such outlets presents a perfect opportunity with the drive to bring our research to the general public. Social media allows us all to interact with other scientists but, once you get going, the general public too, as we discussed here.

TWITTER

Technically, you do not need an account to read what’s going on; you also do not need a smartphone, any steam kettle of a PC or MAC will do.

I am in no way advocating that you join up. Have a quiet trawl through what science is on there, and maybe like me, you will make the leap! Discussing science in this format makes you think about what you say.

Being able to have a conduit that will generally be viewed by people interested in science but also has the opportunity to be picked up by a wider audience is what we are being asked to do in science. The amount of work needed to be a scientist on Twitter but not become an addict is, in my opinion, well worth it.

A good starting point is to read some of the blogs and transcripts from a fantastic episode that ran under #overlyhonestmethods during the first half of Jan 2013:

Nature.com has a number of active twitter accounts. Nature Reviews Microbiology (@NatRevMicro) regularly generates lists of papers of interest.

Microbiology Twitter Journal Club (#microtwjc). This is an organised twitter-based chat on microbiology every two weeks where a chosen paper is discussed. Recently, Microtwjc succeeded in gaining a response to one discussion by the authors of the paper – This is a form of public engagement exploiting social media portals and the group in question got free advertisement for their work!

LINKEDIN

I will openly admit I can not remember actually joining up to this portal. I, like many of us, continually get emails asking me to accept someone’s invite to their community. Recently, my ex-PhD student started looking for a more secure opportunity of employment. He and a number of others in the same position were given advice to maintain their LinkedIN profile. Exploit it as a professional digital CV, use its features to the maximum and, importantly, generate your own “linked in community” of people you know in science that can support your claims. This includes knowing how to pour gels, purify proteins and use seriously kick-ass microscopes or any other piece of kit we have access to! He got his current position due to his profile fitting a match during an employment consultation search.

This experience has given me a chance to see what its uses are. This means that my LinkedIN profile has gone from being an annoyance to something that is there to support my students and post-docs (if I ever have any again!) when they are actively looking for employment. Its not there for my own gain, its there so that they can state who trained/taught them and if someone wishes to, they can view my profile and look at my own career history.

My social media timeline:

I have been on Facebook since 2009. I joined Twitter in March 2012 and this will be my second date with blogging.

I joined Facebook for a very specific reason. I had the amazing opportunity through a joint Royal Society and Daiwa foundation International Project Grant to visit my Japanese collaborators for 3 months. It was agreed that we would keep our family up to date with our antics by exploiting Facebook’s method of publishing photos.

I joined Twitter through a friend posting tweets to Facebook: these included what was floating their boat on new papers, commenting on science articles in the press and generally having science-based discussions with other scientists. I made a decision from day one Twitter would be for science (hahaha!). What do I have now? Well, I do focus on Science and I follow a good group of science communicators across the UK and US. I also seem to be following many of the real ale bars of Newcastle upon Tyne!

Image Sources: Here and Here

 

Bulging bacteria and the origins of life

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Jeff (left), Romain (centre) and Yoshikazu (right), the team of researchers behind these exciting discoveries

 

In a paper published this week in Cell, Jeff Errington’s team in ICaMB, have discovered new insights into the origin of life on Earth.

 

Jeff and his team share their results

Bacteria were the first organisms to appear on planet earth. Almost all modern bacteria have a tough protective shell called a cell wall. The structure of the wall and the mechanisms used by cells to manufacture it are conserved, suggesting that the wall was invented right at the beginning of bacterial evolution, and, therefore, when the first true cells emerged.

Production of cell wall is carefully regulated by complex machineries that allow the cell to enlarge and then divide in a controlled manner, all the time maintaining the integrity of the wall intact.

Despite its importance, it seems that many modern bacteria can survive cell wall loss under certain very special conditions, such as when they are treated with certain antibiotics that interfere with its production, like penicillin. Not only that, but a few years ago my lab showed that these “L-form” cells (named after the Lister Institute in London where they were first described) no longer need the complex mechanisms normally needed for bacterial growth and division. Instead, they grow by extrusion of irregular tubes or blebs of cytoplasm, that pinch off into daughter cells.

Our team – me, Yoshikazu Kawai, Romain Mercier – has been working on this problem for some time. “Studying L-form biology is a real technical challenge, and this work could not have succeeded without the strong collaboration established between us“, says Romain. As Yoshikazu explains: “we developed a very simple genetic system to isolate mutations enabling L-form development from non-viable protoplasts.”

We are excited because we think we have now solved the mystery of how L-forms grow and divide. Our latest results, published in Cell, show that the mechanism is remarkably simple: it requires only that cells make excess amounts of membrane – the thin porous layer that acts as the outer boundary of all cells, including our own.

Increasing the membrane surface area beyond the amount needed to contain the cytoplasm causes the cell to buckle and distort. Eventually, this leads to pinching off of membrane bags that are ill formed but nonetheless viable “baby” cells.

Time-lapse photography representing the division of B. subtilis without cell wall (L-form). The images were obtained using light microscopy. Scale bar: 3 μm

At first, we thought this mechanism was too simple to be true, we changed our minds when we were alerted to amazing experiments being done by several groups working on the origins of life, particularly Jack Szostak at Harvard, Saša Svetina in Ljubljana and Peter Walde in Zurich. These groups have been wondering how primitive cells could have arranged to grow and divide efficiently without spilling all of their contents. They recently found that simple membrane bags, called “vesicles”, can be induced to grow and reproduce into multiple smaller vesicles, in the test tube, just by increasing their surface area.

So, in explaining how the bizarre L-form bacteria manage to survive the loss of their beloved cell wall, we think we may now also have glimpsed how the first primitive cells could have duplicated themselves at the dawn of life on earth.

Jeff Errington 
Director of the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology

 

Cell paper: http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(13)00135-9
Cell website: http://www.cell.com/home see PaperFlick
Newcastle University Press Release:http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press.office/press.release/item/how-did-early-primordial-cells-evolve#.US-chen77jQ

Soapbox Science guest blogpost: http://www.blogs.nature.com/soapboxscience/2013/02/28/social-media-from-an-institutional-perspective-why-are-we-on-there

ICaMB website: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/ICaMB-Newcastle/416200498466481
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ICaMB_NCL
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSuZgA6URiXTUoHq1tMe-PQ

Welcome!

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Welcome to the ICaMB Blog!

One of the most important things we need to do as scientists is communicate, both with each other and with people outside academia and research.  To help this, we will be starting a range of new, interconnected social media activities in ICaMB.  In addition to this blog, we now have a Facebook page and regular updates on ICaMB activities via Twitter.

Here, we hope to have contributions not only from academics in ICaMB but also from our students, postdocs and other key members of the Institute, as well as  some guest bloggers.  We plan to have regular blog articles appear every two weeks but this will be supplemented with the thoughts and opinions of a range of contributors as well as updates on events as they happen.

Our plan is to inform but also hopefully entertain.  We will highlight some of the great research that is going on in ICaMB but also discuss some of the important issues that affect all of us as scientists.  We will value your contributions so if you have something you would like to say, please get in touch!

This is an exciting time in ICaMB.  Although we, like everyone else, are having to weather the economic storm, there is also plenty of great science being performed and new initiatives that make this a great place to work and perform research. The new ICaMB postdoc (IPA) and postgraduate student (PANIC) associations will provide a new voice for some of our most important members of staff. We also have the new IRES, Independent Researcher Establishment Scheme that will bring new principal investigators and ideas to the Institute (more on this later).

Check out the Facebook pages for photos of ICaMB activities and scientists.  Feel free to contribute your own (embarrassing photos of Professors are always welcome). Check out Twitter for all the latest up to the minute information and news about ICaMB activities. We hope you will enjoy reading this blog.

Please join in and tell us what you are thinking!