Skinny Seaweed

Posted on 13 March, 2014 by Suzanne

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, with at least 2.8 million people dying each year as a result of being overweight or obese (WHO). Dr Matthew Wilcox from Professor Jeff Pearson’s lab tells us about his research into the slimming powers of brown seaweed. A simple and sustainable food additive.

“Seaweed bread” by Dr Matt Wilcox

Seaweed bread

Over 40% of the calories in your diet can come from fat (mainly triacylglycerol) and you digest and absorb between 95 and 100% of all the fat that you eat! There is one enzyme (pancreatic lipase) that accounts for 80% of all fat digestion and if the activity of this enzyme can be reduced then we will absorb less fat from our diet.

The Pearson lab has shown that alginate (a dietary fibre extracted from brown seaweed) can reduce the activity of pancreatic lipase by up to 80%. If you don’t digest fat you can’t absorb it.

Lipase is a recognised target as a treatment for obesity. In 2010 the pharmaceutical drug orlistat (Xenical) which acts on this enzyme accounted for 98% of all UK prescriptions for the treatment of obesity. The remaining 2% was for Sibutramine which has since been withdrawn. We are therefore heavily reliant upon one drug which can have some rather unpleasant side effects (brown trouser syndrome) greatly reducing patient compliance. So even though it’s the only pharmaceutical drug available, not everyone who is prescribed it will actually take it!

Tasteless alginate is already found in a number of foods (E400-405), salad dressings, ice-creams ….. even beer.

Thankfully there is still hope (and clean trousers) since some, if not all of the side effects of orlistat can be eliminated if it is taken with a high fibre product. Luckily, it just so happens that alginate is not only a lipase inhibitor but is also a dietary fibre itself, and to top it all off makes great bread!

Most commercial alginates come from seaweed, hence the seaweed bread. The extraction process is relatively simple and you end up with a dry white (ish) powder, great to use in products with flour. There is no ‘seaweed’ taste (although seaweed bread is actually quite nice) and in blinded tests people actually prefer the alginate bread over standard white bread. Likely to be due to the retention of moisture so it’s like eating fresh bread, even if it’s a day or so old

Seaweed culture and harvesting is big business around the world from the Shetlands to Shanghai and can even be seen from space. The extracted alginates are already used in the food industry, just not necessarily the right ones or in the right concentrations. The majority we test in the lab are from Norwegian or Scottish seaweeds.

The latest technology in seaweed harvesting.

The alginate project in the lab started nearly eight years ago with simple colourimetric assays. These initial experiments showed that certain seaweed alginates can inhibit lipase. From this we developed a model of the upper gastrointestinal tract to test the alginates in a system as close to a human as possible without being human. Our model gut has now been used to show that alginate is released from the bread (amongst other things) and has also featured in a BBC3 program. We have just finished the first proof of concept trial in humans, so there will be more on this story to follow.

The Pearson Lab line-up

The big fat truth is that fat in food is often vital for the enjoyment, try eating cream crackers without butter (3 cracker challenge). It’s hard! So, if we can still get the enjoyment but not all the calories from our food then we can significantly reduce the amount of calories we take in. It’s not just a reduction in the absorption of fat in the food that contains the alginate; it’s the entire meal that you eat. Not that you should eat loads of burgers but if we could put alginate into burger buns then you would reduce the amount of fat absorbed from the burger, the cheese, the fries and the ridiculously oversized milkshake that you have with it.

Low fat lunch?

Perhaps that’s the best way to end a blog with the thought of a ridiculously oversized milkshake and also by thanking the BBSRC for all their funding and support!

Matt’s PhD was a BBSRC CASE studentship sponsored by Technostics

This work has been patented

Full Links

The patent: http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?DB=worldwide.espacenet.com&II=1&ND=3&adjacent=true&locale=en_EP&FT=D&date=20121129&CC=US&NR=2012302521A1&KC=A1

Technostics: http://www.technostics.com/

Matthew Wilcox: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/staff/profile/matthew.wilcox

Jeff Pearson: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/staff/profile/jeffrey.pearson

One year of the ICaMBlog in numbers

Posted on 27 February, 2014 by Neil

By Neil Perkins

At the one year anniversary of the ICaMB Blog, and after publishing 35 articles, it seemed like a good time to reflect on what this initiative has (or has not) achieved. When Paula Salgado, Phil Aldridge and myself (with the prompting and encouragement of Bob Lightowlers) started this, there were a number of very clear goals we had in mind. The first of these was to improve communication within ICaMB itself, so that we would all have a better sense of what our colleagues were up to, their achievements and to introduce new PIs. In particular we wanted to highlight some of the great things our newly formed postdoc and PhD student associations (IPA and PANIC) have been doing. We also wanted to tell the world about some of the exciting science being performed in ICaMB and highlight some issues and discoveries that we thought would be of wide interest. Finally we wanted to show the fun side of being a scientist in Newcastle and reveal some of what we get up to when we’re not in the lab.

Did we succeed? Well that’s probably not for us to judge and the true test of this will be if the blog is still going in five years time (and if people are still reading it). However, one unanticipated highlight for me has been the discovery of Google Analytics and what it can tell us about the success of the ICAMBlog. As a hard core geeky scientist, Google Analytics can be frighteningly addictive. A guilty pleasure for me has been to watch in real time what happens after we start publicising the latest blog: as soon as the emails get sent out, the tweets are sent or the Facebook update posted you can see people logging in to read the blog. We don’t know who you are but we can see where you are and how you found us. Fascinating and slightly scary.

Each spike on the graph represents people viewing the website when a new blog article comes out. There is an immediate response the moment we send out an email, tweet or share on Facebook. Data shown is from Sept 1st - Dec 31st, 2013

So for this blog, to commemorate our one year anniversary, I thought I’d share some of the numbers. How many of you actually read the ICAMBlog? Where are you from? Which article was the most popular?

So how popular are we?

At the time of writing we have had 7,703 ‘Unique Visitors’ to the blog, who have made 11,715 visits comprising a total of 20,602 ‘Page views’. Unique visitors really means different devices, so someone who accesses the blog through their phone as well as a computer will count twice. On the whole though, we are pretty happy with this. It is thousands of people who now hopefully know more about ICaMB and what we do than a year ago.

So where is everyone coming from who reads the blog? Unsurprisingly, the majority of our readers (58%) come from the UK. The USA and Canada are the next highest, (although see the ‘reddit event’ below), followed by Australia and India. Although the numbers are lower for other countries, the readership is truly global.

Within the UK, as might be expected, we have a large number of readers from the Northeast. Readers from Newcastle upon Tyne represent 38.5% of our total readership which means that >60% of our readers are not local, so we are achieving our aim of getting the word out there. London is the next highest city followed by several other cities with strong university links.

Someone from San Francisco just started reading the blog

What are people reading?

Our most popular article by far has been ‘Exploding Bacteria for Science’, which featured the work of Kenn Gerdes from the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology here in ICAMB. This article garnered 3,189 page views, 15.5% of our total (note to blog team, must feature more exploding things next year). However, this number may be slightly artificial as it benefited from exposure on reddit (see what that means below). Our first ever long feature was ‘Bulging Bacteria and the Origins of Life’ which highlighted an outstanding Cell paper from the Errington lab on L-form bacteria. This is particularly impressive as the blog was starting and it wasn’t on people’s radar yet. Completing our top 5 were the blog on ICaMB PhD student opportunities, the ‘Great Bacterial Bake Off‘ and ‘ICaMB goes away for the day’.

The success of Exploding Bacteria is also reflected in the number of views on our ICaMB Youtube site, with 3,186 visits to the penicillin effect video associated with this article. Jeff Errington’s Bulging Bacteria video follows, with 322 views and the video of Jeremy Lakey and a new bacterial cell killer had a respectable 187 views, completing our top 3 video chart.

Are they really reading these articles?

One interesting feature of Google Analytics is that we can see how long people stay on each page, although we cannot control for people opening the page and then wandering off to do something else.

So when people from England and Wales log on, they spend an average of 1 minute 51 seconds with the page open. They may be making tea of course but in general this suggests they are reading the blog. Readers from Scotland and Northern Ireland, slightly less impressive, with 58 seconds and 1 minute 7 seconds respectively. Maybe they are speed-readers in Scotland.

When we look deeper, some of those page view numbers start to look a bit less impressive. All those visitors from the USA don’t look so good when you realise they stayed on the page for an average of 13 seconds. Low attention span maybe? It’s OK to say that, they will not have read this far down the page. Canada is a bit better at 34 seconds, Australia is at 24 seconds but India is a very respectable 1 minute 25 seconds. People from Newcastle spend 2 minutes 11 seconds on each page. London less so at 46 seconds while other cities average around 30 seconds.

Our headline numbers also start to look a bit less impressive when we take visit duration into account. Of our 20,723 page views, 9,669 are for less than 10 seconds. But that still leaves >8,000 page views being read properly. So a bit of a mixed bag but at least our colleagues seem to be interested in what we are writing.

The impact of social media

To get word of the blog to the outside world we have been using Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media. Google Analytics can also tell us how successful this has been. Of our 11,715 visits to the site, 1,284 have been through Twitter and 1,105 through Facebook. Twitter visitors stay for 1 minute 14 seconds on the site, while Facebook visitors stay for 49 seconds.

The reddit event

Reddit is a ‘a social news and entertainment website where registered users submit content in the form of links or text posts’. Paula sometimes submits links to the science section when the ICAMBlog is carrying something that we think might be of interest. This was certainly case with ‘Exploding Bacteria for Science’, which picked up a lot of traffic from reddit, accounting in part for its high popularity. In total, we have had 1,557 visitors come through reddit and another 488 through Stumbleupon (‘a form of web search engine that finds and recommends web content to its users’). These account for quite a large chunk of our USA traffic to the site. The down side is that the average visit duration of a Reddit user is 3 seconds, while someone from Stumbleupon lasts for 9 seconds. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that they are not actually reading the content. So the moral is that while some approaches can boost our overall numbers, it is whether they stay around and actually read the articles that is important.

That big spike is people coming to the blog from reddit, staying 3 seconds and then leaving. The smaller spikes are our normal readership levels

Any Conclusions?

So have we been a success? We think so but there is clearly a lot of room for improvement and scope to increase our readership. In the year ahead we certainly plan to continue our work on the blog and are very happy to welcome Suzanne Madgwick and Kevin Waldron to the blog team. We will continue to highlight the science being produced in Newcastle but are thinking of broadening the scope of our articles. For example, should we publish more opinion pieces and take a stand on the various issues confronting scientists today, both in and outside ICaMB? We’d be very interested in hearing from you to let us know what you think. Comment is easy: tell us what you think and submit, no need to register or create an account. We would really like to hear from you, the reader that spends some time with us and reads all the way to end – what kind of articles would you be interested in reading? Let us know!

A final word. Those of us on the blog team would like to thank Phil Aldridge for all his help over the last year. Phil has decided to step down from the blog after this first year but his input and enthusiasm has been crucial to getting things going and keeping the momentum up. Thanks Phil!

IPA Update: The Mysterious World of Biotech

Posted on 20 February, 2014 by Neil

By the IPA committee

On Thursday 30^th January for the 4^th Science Lives Seminar the ICaMB Postdoc Association (IPA) decided to delve into what it is really like to work in the Biotech industry, by hosting Dr Keith Foster from Syntaxin Ltd (Oxford, UK). For many of us Postdocs, the Biotech Industry is an unexplored entity…so how and why did Keith Foster make the transition from Postdoc to a Biotech company co-founder? And, what advice would he give Postdocs thinking of making the same leap?

Dr Keith Foster giving his presentation

Dr Foster’s talk started by illustrating his personal experience; he obtained a PhD in biological sciences in London then set his sights on a getting a post-doc position. He explained that he had first thought he would head to the bright lights of the USA for this but as his wife’s dentistry qualifications were not recognised over there, the couple moved to Nottingham to pursue their respective careers. At this point Keith really wanted to pursue a long and successful academic career and said he couldn’t imagine leaving academia.

However, he soon realised that you can never have a career plan set-in-stone as within the first couple of years of his post-doc, Keith and his wife found out they were expecting their first child. He recalled this period as a wake-up call, like an alarm telling him he should get what he considered a “real job”, meaning he wanted a stable, and hopefully permanent job to support his growing family. He said he quickly realised that in a field as dynamic as science you not only have to evolve and make career moves for personal circumstances, but also, because the world of science is ever changing, we never know what to expect around the next corner!

So, from Nottingham, Keith made his big move to industry as a Senior Scientist, the company being SmithKline (before it became GSK). Much to his surprise in his new job, he found that he could still put to use his “passion for science” at the bench and really got a thrill from the drug development and translational aspects of the projects that were new to him. Early on Keith started working on the protein, Botulinum neurotoxin, which he says he “fell in love” with and this protein remains his passion to this day with Keith recently having opened his own company based on it 20 years or so later, Syntaxin Ltd.

Like many of our PIs, being the big boss at Syntaxin Ltd means that Keith does not himself spend time at the bench, but he does insist that any Postdoc going into a company as a Senior Scientist would have to do lots of bench work, making what an academic postdoc and an industrial senior scientist do on a daily basis “very similar”. We should however expect a pay rise! Nice!

Keith Foster’s company was recently bought by a French company (IPSEN). This is where one of his biggest pieces of advice came from… always leave on good terms, and try not to make any enemies! It turns out that IPSEN actually made Keith redundant earlier on in his industrial career. However, Keith moved on, working at a handful of other companies on his way, but couldn’t believe it when he managed to shake hands with IPSEN over a multi-million dollar deal for his company all those years later! A real lesson in the importance of networking and maintaining those contacts!

Another point that Keith highlighted was that Biotech or the pharmaceutical industry may not be the holy grail that many PhD students or post-docs think it is…. he posed the question is there really more job stability there these days? In academia we have fixed two or three year contracts, but industry is also highly competitive and money is hard to come by, with some firms choosing to move away from the UK and making redundancies.

To wrap this seminar up, like all our Science Lives Seminar speakers, we asked him to mention how he managed to handle a personal life and successful research career in parallel. Being a father of 4, and now a grandfather of 5, he obviously didn’t spend all of his time working. He did say however “my wife laughed when she read this question”. They obviously would not have both given the same answer!

After the seminar there was the usual informal session for post-docs to ask questions over a glass of wine or a beer, and after the IPA committee enjoyed a friendly and filling meal with Keith at the Broad Chare.

The IPA is in the process of organising our next social event, updates will follow by email and on the website. Look out! If you would like to become involved with the IPA and help organise future events, please get in touch!

IPA Committee

IPA is run by Postdocs, for Postdocs. Get involved!

IPA page on the ICAMB website: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/research/postdoc/association/

IPA Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/462376430446559

Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biosciences: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/

Students take the stand: 2nd Year Post-Graduate Research Talks Day

Posted on 7 February, 2014 by Paula

by Dr Tim Cheek

The annual ICaMB 2nd year PGR Talks Day was held at the Research Beehive in November 2013

Every year, we give our 2nd year Phd students to present their research in a relaxed, informal setting to their peer group and to the incoming 1st year students. The purpose of the event is two-fold:

– provide 2nd year students with a new presentation skill of giving a research talk to an informed but non-expert audience

– give 1st year students an illustration of the diversity of the science that is done in ICaMB and an idea of where their own research should be in one year’s time when it will be their turn to speak.

This year’s talks on eukaryotic biology ranged from whole organism mammalian physiology (“The effect of neuromodulatory medication on the oral mucosa”, Mustafa Al-Musawi, Jakubovics lab) to single cell yeast genetics (“The role of the CST complex in telomere integrity, Kate Clark, Lydall lab)].

Jack Stevenson presents his work on copper metabolism in S. aureus

A key aim of basic bioscience research carried out in ICaMB is that it underpins our understanding of the molecular basis of disease and disorder and informs future translational biomedical approaches. This aim was strongly evident with talks on mitochondrial translational defects in encephalomyopathy (Maria Wesolowska, Lightowlers lab), the molecular basis of disease caused by non-invasive enteric pathogens (Oli Amin, Kenny lab), the role of the oxidative stress response in mediating fungal infections (Melanie Ikeh, Quinn lab), the molecular basis of “ribosomopathies”- human disorders of ribosome dysfunction (Loren Macdonald, Watkins lab), the effects of Resveratrol (Suzanne Escome, Ford lab) and DNA methylation (Joy Hardyman, Ford lab) on age-related genes, and on the role of membrane transport proteins in renal stone disease (Sarah Rice, Thwaites lab). The theme was extended with talks on how dysfunction in metal ion homeostasis in cells plays a key role in disease and disorder, for example calcium signals in neuroblastoma (Claire Whitworth, Cheek lab) and copper in Alzheimer’s disease (Eliona Tsefou, Dennison lab). Copper metabolism in lower eukaryotes was discussed in a talk on copper trafficking in yeast (Kerrie Brusby, Dennison lab) and in prokaryotes by talks on copper binding sites in Bacillus subtilis (Gianpiero Landolfi, Dennison lab) and Staphylococcus aureus (Jack Stevenson, Waldron lab).

The evolution of eukaryotic cells, their genomes and organelles, is also of great interest to ICaMB researchers who collaborate with, among others, the Natural History Museum in London. One talk described the development of better methods, based upon likelihood and Bayesian approaches, for phylogenetic analysis of molecular data (Svetlana Cherlin, Embley lab). The aim is to improve the reconstruction of phylogenetic trees relevant to understanding the early evolution of eukaryotes and the origins of eukaryotic genes.

Another illustration of the diversity of ICaMB research is that laboratories are also engaged in the development of new technological strategies for biomedical research. This was demonstrated by talks on the development of a primary tissue culture model system that can be used to identify the renal toxicity of new therapeutic drugs (Sarah Billington, Colin Brown lab), a simplified detection process for aggregation in the manufacture of biotherapeutics (Alysia Davies, Lakey lab), and on the use of natural antisense transcripts that may lead to improved gene silencing strategies in clinical applications (Monica Piatek, Werner lab).

Sarah Shapiro discussing her work on gut microbiota

The Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology in ICaMB is at the forefront of research into fundamental aspects of the cell biology and biochemistry of bacteria. Research provides scientific insights crucial for the discovery and development of new antibiotics, as well as providing solutions to a huge range of industrial and environmental problems through the emerging discipline of synthetic biology. This focus was reflected by talks on bacterial cell wall peptidoglycans (Adam Lodge, Vollmer lab) and D-alanine (Karzan Sidiq, Daniel lab), on system noise in the transcription of negatively regulated bacterial genes (Thomas Ewen, Hamoen lab), on the bacteriocin colicin (Daria Stroukova, Lakey lab), on cell wall deficient bacteria (L-forms; James Brown, Errington lab) and on the role of dental plaque bacteria in biofilm formation (Jill Robinson, Jakubovics lab). The theme was advanced with two talks on complex glycan recognition, acquisition and degradation by human gut bacteria (Sarah Shapiro, Bolam lab; Max Temple, Gilbert lab). Results of this research have applications in a number of areas including the development of biofuels derived from plant cell wall material and in personalised nutrition approaches to optimise microbiota function for the benefit of human health.

Students chatting about the talks and their research

This opportunity to talk about science and to engage with peers in a semi-formal environment, with no academic staff, is invariably voted by 1st and 2nd year students as their most favoured ICaMB event of the year. This year was no different. With 26 speakers and around 50 attendees in each of the 4 sessions, ICaMB students are clearly voting with their feet!

Dr Tim Cheek is the ICaMB Postgraduate Tutor.

If you are interested in applying for a PhD studentship in ICaMB more details can be found at http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/study/postgraduate/index.htm

Links

PANIC: the postgraduate network of ICaMB http://www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/panicicamb/index.html

Postgraduate Opportunities at ICaMB http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/study/postgraduate/index.htm

ECRs at ICaMB: Solving 3D puzzles

Posted on 24 January, 2014 by Paula

by Dr Paula Salgado

After nearly one year editing the ICaMBlog, the time has come for me to tell you about my science and work since I joined ICaMB almost 18 months ago.

The fact that it has been 18 months since I moved up North to establish my own research group seems to have snuck up on me… Don’t get me wrong, so much has happened that, if anything, it’s surprising it all took place in 1 and a half years. At the same time, the feeling of a new adventure is still there.

Science is a constant adventure to seek new knowledge, to understand new mechanism, to see new things. In my case, to see into the very core of life’s machines: proteins. I use X-ray protein crystallography to probe the structure of proteins. It’s a bit like solving a puzzle: fitting the pieces of information together until we have a 3D view of the protein.

It is actually fitting that my blog post is the first ICaMB publishes in 2014 as this is the International Year of Crystallography. I could write a lot about it, but for now, I’ll leave you with an amazing video made by the Royal Institution that explains it all – in cartoons! If you want to know more about Crystallography, the Ri has a great collection of videos there, including Prof Stephen Curry’s Friday Evening Discourse, which I strongly recommend.

Freezing protein crystals for data collection at Diamond Light Source. H&S warning: liquid nitrogen is a hazard and we do handle it safely. At this point, I was just dipping the crystals into a small volume, all other procedures handling larger volumes involve wearing appropriate protection.

As a protein crystallographer, I’ve always been interested in proteins that have a relevance to human disease and used this technique to understand their structure and function. In the last few years, I’ve worked on proteins from human pathogens associated with hospital acquired infections, particularly Clostridium difficile and Candida albicans. However, protein structures don’t necessarily give us all the answers and they must be complemented with biochemical studies, as well as in vivo experiments. So my long term goal has become to establish a Structural Microbiology group, where we focus on structure determination of key proteins and complexes involved in pathogenicity as well as on their functional in vivo characterisation.

This is a challenge as it means stepping out of my structural biology comfort zone into the world of microbiology and cell biology. Not that I haven’t stepped out of my comfort zone before – if anything, those are areas that featured strongly during my undergraduate training as a Biochemistry student at the University of Porto in Portugal. In those days, choosing to do protein crystallography as my undergraduate project was the big step into the unknown. A trend that continued as a post-doc, when I joined Dr Cota and Prof Mathews group, a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) lab at Imperial College, learning a completely different approach to protein structure determination. And just before coming to ICaMB, I worked in Prof Fairweather’s microbiology lab and always tried to learn a bit about the techniques others were using. So the current idea of bringing structural biology and microbiology expertise together in my lab is the natural evolution of these experiences.

C. difficile cells (green rods) lining the microvilli of the human gut. © Wellcome Trust (CC-BY)

Since joining ICaMB, I’ve focused on 2 main projects, both involving proteins from C. difficile. This spore forming strict anaerobe is resistant to most antibiotics and colonises the gut of individuals whose microbiome has been disturbed by these drugs. It is the most prevalent cause of gastrointestinal infections in hospitals and is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the hospital environment. Despite recent decreases in the number of deaths and infections as hygiene procedures have improved in the UK, over 1600 people died in England and Wales in 2012 due to C. difficile infections (CDI). It also causes a huge burden to health systems, with an estimated €3,000 million per annum costs in the EU.

C. difficile disease symptoms are caused by the toxins it releases in a process that has been extensively studied over the years. However, the mechanisms of colonisation of the gut and spore formation are poorly understood. So we have been focusing on proteins involved in these two mechanisms.

Firstly, I’ve been trying to determine the structure of SlpA, the main protein constituent in C. difficile S-layer. S-layer is a paracrystalline coat that covers the cell and is presumed to act like a defense mechanism, as well as being involved in gut colonisation. This work, initiated a few years ago in Prof Fairweather’s lab is now a joint collaboration between our two labs and Dr Fagan, at Sheffield University.

SlpA crystals viewed under polarised light (protein crystals are birefringent, unlike salt crystals)

As this protein has tendency to form 2D paracrystalline layers, getting well ordered 3D crystals required for X-ray crystallography has been a challenge, but I have now succeeded in obtaining good crystals. However, other hurdles still need to be overcome to get a structure – but we are getting there!

Our lab: Adam Crawshaw and Paula Salgado

Last year, Adam Crawshaw joined my group as a BBSRC Doctoral Training Programme (DTP) student and we started a new project, looking at a complex between two membrane proteins that are essential for spore formation. As spores are the infectious agents, revealing the molecular details sporulation is important to understand the pathogenicity and infection cycle of C. difficile.

SpoIIQ and SpoIIIAH localise at the membranes of the forming forespore. Green: Membrane; Red: SNAP-tagged proteins.

When spores are first formed, a small cell (forespore) is engulfed by the larger mother cell, physically isolating it from the environment and nutrients in the medium. So, for the forespore to fully mature, it needs a nurturing channel to the mother cell. The two proteins we are studying – SpoIIQ from the forespore membrane and SpoIIIAH from the mother cell membrane – create this channel. We have already successfully produced recombinant versions of the proteins and shown their interaction in vitro. In collaboration with Prof Henriques at ITQB, Lisbon, we also established their localisation during C. difficile spore formation. Next: crystals! But we are also investigating potential enzymatic activity both in vitro and in vivo, to bring the structure and biology together.

It has been an exciting year and a half – a steep learning curve with many new tasks, from supervising students to managing a lab and teaching undergraduates and postgraduates. The adventure continues, with new challenges and exciting discoveries ahead.

Links

International Year of Crystallography http://www.iycr2014.org/

Royal Institution Crystallography gallery http://richannel.org/celebrating-crystallography

Office for National Statistics (Clostridium difficile data) http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health2/deaths-involving-clostridium-difficile/2012/index.html

European Centre for Disease Intervention and Control on Clostridium difficile http://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/healthtopics/healthcare-associated_infections/clostridium_difficile_infection/pages/index.aspx

BBSRC Doctoral Training Programme http://www.ncl.ac.uk/fms/dtp/

Pruning the Tree of Life

Posted on 13 December, 2013 by Neil

Dr Tom WIlliams

Anyone who has studied biology has seen an image of the tree of life in the text books. Most of us think of this as being set in stone, one of the rock solid foundations on which evolutionary biology is built. However, all is not quite as settled as it seems. Recently, a Nature article from the laboratory of ICaMB’s Professor Martin Embley challenges the traditional three domain structure of the root of life. Here, first author on the paper, Dr Tom Williams, tells us the story.

By Dr Tom Williams

Our modern understanding of the tree of life began in 1977 when Carl Woese and his colleagues discovered the Archaea, a group of prokaryotes originally isolated from extremely hot or salty environments. Although Archaea looked indistinguishable from Bacteria under the microscope, their gene sequences were at least as different to those of Bacteria as from the eukaryotes – the group of organisms, including fungi, animals and plants, whose cells contain a mitochondrion and a nucleus. According to these analyses, living cells should be classified into three main groups: Bacteria, Archaea and eukaryotes – rather than the two (prokaryotes and eukaryotes) that had previously been established based on cell structure. In 1990, Woese and his colleagues published another seminal paper in which they argued for this “three domains” classification. This three-domains tree has become an iconic image in biology, and is often found in the popular science literature, as well as many textbooks – you’ve probably seen it before. Here it is from a 1997 review by Norman Pace:

The traditional 3 domain Tree of Life. From: A molecular view of diversity and the biosphere. Pace NR Science (1997) 276: 734-740

Professor Martin Embley

This was certainly the tree of life that I was familiar with, first as an undergrad and later as a Ph.D. student at Trinity College Dublin. So I was surprised and very intrigued when a certain Martin Embley came to talk at an Irish bioinformatics meeting, claiming that support for the three-domains tree was not as strong as you might expect. New work from his lab instead favoured the “eocyte tree”, in which the eukaryotes (or, at least, some of their genes) actually evolved from within the Archaea. If true, this tree would imply that there were originally only two types of cells – Bacteria and Archaea – and that the eukaryotes (i.e., us!) originated later in a partnership between the two primary domains.

The new model of the Tree of Life proposed by the Embley lab

Fast-forward a couple of years, and I was thinking about where I wanted to do my postdoc. I remembered Martin not only from that talk, but also from some interesting work (2nd link) he had done on a group of parasitic fungi called Microsporidia. I joined his group and began working on microsporidians, but I was still very interested in the tree of life and the origin of eukaryotes. In the meantime, DNA sequencing technology had been improving, and microbial ecologists were beginning to publish genomes from new groups of Archaea that could not be grown in the lab, and so had never been studied before. One of the really exciting findings from these studies was that some Archaea contained genes that looked very similar to fundamental components of our own cells, such as actin and tubulin – two proteins that help to define the microscopic “skeleton” of eukaryotic cells. When we added these new genomes to our analyses, we found even stronger support for the eocyte tree; those findings were reported last year in Proceedings B. At about the same time, a number of other researchers were reporting something similar: as our view of archaeal biodiversity increased, support for the three-domains tree was on the wane. Given the prominent position of the three-domains tree in the literature, and the importance of this question for understanding early life on Earth, we decided to write a review summarizing these recent developments in the field – it came out in Nature this week, and it’s the reason for this blog post!

As we delved back into the 30 years of literature on the molecular tree of life, one of the most interesting discoveries for me was a seam of eocyte literature that I hadn’t been aware of previously. Although many analyses over the past three decades have recovered the three-domains tree, and it appears in all the textbooks, the literature has actually never been unanimous in its support. Nonetheless, it is only in the last five years or so that support for the eocyte hypothesis has reached critical mass, perhaps due to improvements in our statistical methods and, more recently, sampling of archaeal biodiversity.

The Embley lab: Back row, left-to-right: Kacper Sendra, Martin Embley, Tom Williams, Robert Hirt. Front row: Shaojun Long, Ekaterina Kozhevnikova, Andrew Watson, Paul Dean, Maxine Geggie,Alina Goldberg-Cavalleri, Sirintra Nakjang.

Of course, our latest work is almost certainly not going to be the last word on the relationship between eukaryotes and other cells. Our methods are getting better – in part thanks to the statisticians we are collaborating with here in Newcastle – but there is much room for improvement, and so much about the microbial world that we still have to discover. Still, if the eocyte tree is correct – and it appears to be the best-supported tree on the current evidence – then that has important implications for how we understand early life on Earth and the origin of our own cells. For one thing, it rules out the eukaryotes as a primordial cellular lineage, as old as the Bacteria and Archaea. Instead, it suggests that the Bacteria and Archaea were established and diversifying on Earth before the origin of eukaryotes, resurrecting the concept of an “Age of Prokaryotes” on the early Earth. Of course, when you think about the phenomenal number of Bacteria and Archaea that live in your own body, never mind the wider environment, you might well argue that it never ended…

This work was supported by a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship to Tom Williams. Martin Embley acknowledges support from the European Research Council Advanced Investigator Programme and the Wellcome Trust.

Links

The Nature Article: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v504/n7479/full/nature12779.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20131212

The Proceedings B paper: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/279/1749/4870

The Embley lab website: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/microbial_eukaryotes/

Microsporidia papers: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v452/n7187/full/nature06606.html

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/nature06903.html

Careers PAN!C

Posted on 6 December, 2013 by Paula

by PAN!C committee

PAN!C committee

Last Tuesday marked the biggest PAN!C event to date: the Careers PAN!C Postgraduate Symposium. Like many postgraduate research students, it’s likely you’ve been subjected to those pesky lab bench shackles, leaving you little time to give a second thought for what may lay beyond the dreaded viva! There are so many career paths that lay open to you, but it’s difficult to make a start with career planning when it seems like such a distant and sometimes scarily unattainable goal. Can you keep up with the endless pressure of lab confinement with the small chance of attaining an academic professorship (since only 0.45% of PhDs become professors)? After such specific research training is it all a massive waste to move to a different field or change careers? And how the heck can a family life fit in with career success?

After being awarded the Innovation Funding in June, which was an important milestone for PAN!C, the committee were able to organise a half day symposium to showcase the vast array of career options available to PhD students and make the haze of career planning a little clearer.

The symposium hosted 12 insightful career development talks with speakers giving their account of a career path in a range of professions including academia, industry, recruitment, teaching, journalism and patent law. There were also useful stalls from Bionow, SRG and the NHS as well as information from Covance and the Careers Service providing.

The common theme from the speakers was about having passion and enthusiasm for science and research, a notion we can all relate to in our PhDs. This motivation is sure to carry us in good stead to be able choose pretty much any science-related career out there. In short, we chose a good starting point!

Another useful point from the day is that it’s important for postgraduate students to identify and reflect upon their transferable skills and not only to recognise careers where they are likely to succeed but also to fully demonstrate their ability to a potential new employer. Honing this skill will facilitate the diversification to other fields by acknowledging the valuable skill set we gain over our postgraduate studies.

An important take home message from many of the speakers is that determination and drive are so important whatever career you choose. As Ed Yong mentioned, play the long game with your career, it takes much time and effort to build but ultimately it’s worth it. You’ll need to push yourself hard, especially early on, to aid your career progression and rise to a position of responsibility. Often those with successful careers attribute this in part to ‘being in the right place at the right time’ but it’s also about creating opportunities for yourself and being prepared for those make or break situations when they come around. Professor Judith Howard mentioned that it is important to find your inspiration, whether it be a figure or an experience that motivates you or even just a field you really enjoy. Be sure of what you want to do then get out there and just do it. Success doesn’t come easy, but it’s certainly within reach.

PAN!C would like to thank the Postgraduate Innovation Fund for financial backing of the symposium and future academic events, and ICaMB for continued support of PAN!Cs endeavours. Of course, the rapidly growing numbers of postgraduate students getting involved with our events also deserve a massive thank you. Over 60 attended the symposium and the day was a huge success, with 100% of feedback stating it was good or excellent! Such enthusiasm and input from students over the last year has really helped PAN!C become established and have an impact both within ICaMB and recently other institutes across FMS, so much so that we see this as only the beginning of the PAN!C community!

The day ended with refreshments and wine for all and a well-deserved stint in the pub for the committee!

If you are interested in joining the PAN!C committee and furthering your organisational and networking skills, please get in touch. We’re always keen for new members and new ideas, the more the merrier!

Links:

panic.committee@ncl.ac.uk
http://www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/panicicamb/index.html
http://www.societies.ncl.ac.uk/panicicamb/careerspanic.html

ICaMB PhD studentship opportunities

Posted on 15 November, 2013 by Neil

PhD student recruitment season is upon us. If you or maybe someone you know is interested in a doing PhD in Cell and Molecular Biosciences in a leading UK Research Institute (that happens to be based in one of the most exciting yet affordable cities in the UK), then read on. This year we are giving you an early preview of the opportunities available in ICaMB and telling you a bit about who we are and what doing your PhD here with us has to offer.

ICaMB PhD students benefit from being in a dynamic and well funded research environment with access to state of the art technology. Our research interests cover the cutting edge of bacterial cell biology all the way through to eukaryotic cell signalling and cancer research. ICaMB investigators have been awarded £39.32M since 2008, which includes major funding from the Wellcome Trust, the ERC, BBSRC, The Royal Society, Cancer Research UK, Leukemia and Lymphoma Research and the Association of International Cancer Research.

PhD students do not exist on experiments alone and the ICaMB PhD student association PAN!C helps to facilitate social as well as scientific interactions. You can read more about PAN!C in a previous ICaMB blogpost.

The recent 2nd year PhD student presentations

Below we have listed the MRes/PhD Studentships scheduled to begin in ICaMB in September 2014. These are also listed on the ICaMB website, where they will shortly be formally advertised. Further details of the projects and guidelines on how to apply, will be posted in the next few weeks. However, if you would like further details about the projects NOW you can contact the named supervisor directly or the ICaMB Postgraduate Tutor Dr Tim Cheek (email tim.cheek@ncl.ac.uk). In exceptional circumstances, especially if the prospective applicant already has interviews arranged at other institutions, we can expedite and fast track the interview process (please contact Tim Cheek for more details if this applies to you).

Eukaryotic Cell Biology

The last year has seen a lot of recruitment activity in ICaMB, one result of which was the appointment of three new PIs as part of our Independent Researcher Establishment Scheme (IRES). We introduced Dr Owen Davies, Dr Niall Kenneth and Dr Josana Rodriguez recently. Doing PhD research with a new PI offers the chance to work at the bench directly with a young and enthusiastic scientist at the top of their game. Many ‘first’ PhD students go on to achieve great things. There was great competition for our IRES positions and a PhD position with any of these new PIs promises to be a rewarding experience.

Title of Studentship: Uncovering the molecular basis of homologous chromosome synapsis by the synaptonemal complex during mammalian meiosis
Funding Source: BBSRC DTP
Supervisor: Dr Owen Davies (email owen.davies@ncl.ac.uk)

Title of Studentship: What are the protective roles of XIAP in the response to oxidative stress?
Funding Source: BBSRC DTP
Supervisor: Dr Niall Kenneth (email niallk@med.umich.edu)

Title of Studentship: Understanding microtubule dependent signalling in the generation of cellular asymmetries
Funding Source: BBSRC DTP
Supervisor: Dr Josana Rodriguez (email josanarsl@googlemail.com)

We also have PhD studentships available with Prof Brian Morgan and Dr Elizabeth Veal. Both PIs are investigating the important area of oxidative stress signalling (relevant to many diseases, including cancer) using the model organisms Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Caenorhabditis elegans and publish routinely in high impact journals, such as Molecular Cell. A PhD in either lab provides an opportunity to work at the cutting edge of research into eukaryotic cell signalling.

Title of Studentship: How does the regulation of ubiquitin/ubiquitin-like pathways determine cellular responses to reactive oxygen species?
Funding Source:BBSRC DTP
Supervisor: Prof Brian Morgan (email brian.morgan@ncl.ac.uk)

Title of Studentship: Understanding how hydrogen peroxide signals control cell growth, survival and ageing
Funding Source: BBSRC DTP
Supervisor: Dr Elizabeth Veal (email elizabeth.veal@ncl.ac.uk)

Host-Microbe Interactions

The next two positions complement each other, with one exploring the host’s reaction to microbes while the second focusses on the microbe’s response to the host. Dr Judith Hall and Dr David Bolam are both key members of ICaMB and have a strong track record as PhD supervisors. So if you have an inclination towards exploring innate immunity or diving into the growing community of microbiologists interested in the microflora that interacts with us on a daily basis, maybe one of these two posts is for you.

Title of Studentship: Dissecting the role of the Dectin-1 Receptor in the Innate Defences of the Uro-genital Tract
Funding Source: Dr William Edmund Harker Foundation
Supervisor: Dr Judith Hall (email judith.hall@ncl.ac.uk)

Title of Studentship: Understanding how the mucosal layer is a microbial niche within the gut microbiota
Funding Source: BBSRC DTP
Supervisor: Dr David Bolam (email david.bolam@ncl.ac.uk)

Bacterial Cell Biology

The final two positions are both located in the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology, affiliated to ICaMB. You can read up on our work on bacterial cell biology in previous posts including our investigations with bulging bacterial cells to explain division, how we explode bacteria for science, or highlighting a recent paper from Nikolay published in the prestigious journal Science. In addition, Yulia Yuzenkova was recently awarded a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship and her research was featured on the ICaMB blog.

Title of Studentship: Cyanobacterial transcription machinery
Funding Source: BBSRC DTP
Supervisor: Dr Yulia Yuzenkova (email yulia.yuzenkova@ncl.ac.uk)

Title of Studentship: Bacterial immunity and multi-drug resistance
Funding Source: BBSRC DTP
Supervisor: Prof Nikolay Zenkin (email nikolay.zenkin@ncl.ac.uk)

Please note that there are eligibility requirements for BBSRC DTP studentships (link to download pdf).

Typical ICaMB laboratory space

Links

ICaMB studentship page: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/camb/postgrad/funding/studentship/index.htm

ECRs at ICaMB: My Meiotic Journey

Posted on 1 November, 2013 by Neil

In the latest of our series focussing on the new Early Career Researchers (ECR) in ICaMB, we feature Dr Suzanne Madgwick. Suzanne recently returned to the lab after a career break by successfully applying for a Wellcome Trust Career Re-entry fellowship. She tells us more about her science, her life and why coming back into science was always something she wanted to do.

By Dr Suzanne Madgwick

After 6 years officially away from science I am thrilled to be back, almost 10 months in to my first fellowship position and about to supervise my first PhD student ….. though more than a little frightened by how fast the time is going! ICaMB has been a very positive and supportive place to come back to and the future looks bright for our growing meiosis team.

Not many PhD students get to ride horses as part of their project

I started out my meiotic journey not as a cell biologist, but as a Physiology and Nutrition student at the University of Leeds where I quickly found that the area of biology I am most fascinated by is the complexity, control, and number of systems a body has dedicated to reproducing itself. From my degree I went straight into a PhD here at Newcastle, in SAgE, with Dr Andrew Beard studying endocrine control of the developing reproductive system in cows. Whilst adolescent bulls are not the easiest experimental model to deal with, like most people I have very fond memories of my PhD. A definite highlight was a year of practical work carried out at a veterinary university in Canada, being able to round up my animals on horseback and drive oversized farm vehicles!

Brightfield image of an in-vitro matured metaphase II stage mouse oocyte showing polar body 1 (containing the waste chromosomes) from the first meiotic division. Approx diameter of the oocyte = 80um

Although I am proud of my PhD work, during this time my interests made a definite shift from whole animal reproductive systems to the molecular control of the reproductive cells themselves. Luckily, Professor Keith Jones (formerly of ICaMB) offered me a Post Doc position in his lab researching an arrest point in the life of a mammalian oocyte that maximises the window of opportunity for fertilisation. This was a successful time and we were able to publish a number of papers detailing the control of this arrest and how spermatozoa are then able to awaken an oocyte. I was left in no doubt that I had found not only the area, but also a method of research that I thoroughly enjoy being a part of.

Nearing the end of my post doc and armed with a pretty solid CV, I turned my interest to my own meiosis and made the decision to leave science on a high and spend a few years concentrating on bringing up a family. I always knew I would attempt a comeback, researching and bookmarking the Wellcome Trust Career Re-entry pages at the same time as I planned my exit.

Suzanne's research no longer requires access to a combine harvester

After 5 years of baby and toddler groups, and 2 confused little boys wondering why their mother suddenly started needing to go back to school (I was asked at one point if it was because I didn’t try very hard when I was at proper school the first time) I began regular visits to the lab and a period as full time mother / nocturnal grant writer. I can’t say any of this was very easy, but I also can’t imagine having the same enthusiasm for any other career. The support and advice I have had from both the Institute and the Wellcome Trust regarding career re-entry has been excellent. Taking a break from science was certainly the right decision for me. For anybody else considering this there are a number of ways for both men and women to re-enter a career in science, (in addition to the Wellcome Trust there is our own Faculty/Barbour Fellowship scheme, as well as the Dorothy Hodgkin and Daphne Jackson fellowships ).

The end stage of the application process was an interview at Wellcome Trust headquarters in London and whilst I tried to appreciate the privilege of being there in the first place, I have to agree with Kevin Waldron and say that it was also the most intimidating experience of my career. My second visit to the interview room for a Fellows conference in the summer was a far more relaxed and really a very inspirational meeting of both current and past Career Re-entry Fellows, including Newcastle’s Professor Helen Arthur who took a 10 year break.

Balancing a career and a young family is a certainly a tricky juggling act which I’m sure most parents have experienced. Attempting to work part-time in research is also pretty difficult (largely I admit a self-inflicted problem caused by the drive to try out the next experiment). I’m still working on this balance. Thankfully the Fellowship Scheme has the flexibility to be able to make changes to working hours and my children are already very interested in quizzing me about cells. I confess a great deal of pride when I recently overheard my 4 year old give a very basic yet accurate description of aneuploidy to his nursery teacher.

My current interest is in the events surrounding aneuploidy in female meiosis. Human oocytes have an extremely high failure rate, frequently resulting in an error in chromosome segregation, which is considered to be the leading genetic cause of birth defects and miscarriages.

Suzanne getting ready to inject oocytes using a mouth pipette*

In particular I plan to concentrate my research on unknown aspects of cell cycle control in mammalian oocytes through the first and most error prone of the meiotic divisions. Theories formed towards the end of my post doc along with more recent preliminary data have led to the hypothesis that an entirely novel mechanism of metaphase exit may exist in female meiosis; one which has not previously been noted through studies in mitosis. Our experimental approach is to use fluorescently-tagged gene constructs in real time live cell assays. mRNA encoding these constructs is microinjected into oocytes, resulting

in a fluorescent signal as a result of protein expression. Fluorescent expression and mRNA knock down experiments characterise the behaviour of resulting proteins. Of particular interest is, the targeting of the maturation promoting factor (MPF) component cyclin B1, which is crucially destroyed to allow chromosomes to segregate. A full understanding of how oocytes progress through cell division will help to explain why female meiotic cells do not have the same capacity to check and repair themselves as healthy mitotic cells do.

Intriguingly, like female meiosis, a failure to correctly regulate chromosome division is a major phenotype of virtually all cancers. Hopefully by investigating features of a cell cycle that appears to allow cells to proliferate despite division errors, my research will be of interest beyond meiosis and to the wider field of cell biology.

*mouth pipetting is considered to be a quick and accurate way of stripping cumulus cells and transferring delicate oocytes in minimal volumes of media. Glass Pasteur’s are drawn over a Bunsen burner and broken to give a pipette diameter of just a few microns above that of the oocyte.

Links

Newcastle Biomedicine Fellowships http://www.ncl.ac.uk/biomedicine/research/fellowship/

Wellcome Trust Career Re-entry Fellowships http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Biomedical-science/Funding-schemes/Fellowships/Basic-biomedical-fellowships/wtd004380.htm

Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowships: http://royalsociety.org/grants/schemes/dorothy-hodgkin/

Daphne Jackson Fellowships: http://www.daphnejackson.org/fellowships/

ICaMB goes away for a day

Posted on 25 October, 2013 by

by Phil Aldridge

As scientists, it is critically important to prevent ourselves from becoming isolated in our own specialised world , as maybe, just maybe, the best person to help solve the scientific riddle you have been fighting with works just down the corridor. Finding that person is enormously helped by working in a vibrant and open community. This is why, once in a while, coming together with your colleagues to discuss the science we are pursuing is vital. This is something we have always tried to nurture in ICaMB . On a personal note it was one of the key factors that made me decide to accept the offer of the lectureship I interviewed for 10 years ago!

So, to our ICaMB Away Day held on Monday 14th October 2013 at the Vermont Hotel in downtown Newcastle. A new focus for the event this year was to hear primarily from the post-docs and PhD students about the work they are doing. In addition, we also featured talks from three of our new PIs, Owen Davies, Yulia Yuzenkova, who was recently awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and Bert Van-Den-Berg.

A unique aspect of ICaMB is the diversity of the science we do and this is always a major take home message when we get together during our away days. This year, talks ranged from some fascinating work using bioinformatic analysis to interrogate the deep realms of evolution all the way up to the significance of where one little helix fits into a protein structure. Ah the joys of science…

Another way to view our away day is to focus on the range of techniques we all employ. The day was opened by Henrik Strahl* from CBCB, who is doing some elegant work with the super resolution microscope we have housed in the Baddiley-Clark building. Incidentally these microscopes are available for anyone in ICaMB to use and get excited about, not just Henrik.

Sometimes, to get to the bottom of our inquisitiveness, we require some BIG science. During our away day we heard from Simon Cockell, Arnuad Basle and Peter Banks about three opportunities we have in Newcastle to take our science and its analysis to that level using high throughput screening and bioinformatics analysis.

Arnuad gave a brief overview of how the Structural Biology lab has been coordinating a wide range of projects, with an impressive collaborators slide that was a who’s who of ICaMB.

Simon highlighted three large ICaMB data analysis projects he has been involved in from the Bioinformatic Support Unit. He also used the chance to get rather excited about the recent developments that has allowed the BSU to begin proactive recruitment, to bring in, as he said, “A half a dozen people to do a dozen peoples work, rather than two doing it all”

Peter then introduced the new faculty high-throughput facility that has been developed out of the work he has done with David Lydall. Hearing these talks can stimulate ICaMB members to look for ways to exploit these facilities to benefit their own research – exciting times, if you have the money of course.

Finally we come to the PhD students. Instead of the typical format of more talks, the organising committee this year invited our students to attempt a format growing in popularity termed “The 3 Minute Thesis.” This was ICaMBs first experience of this, although our colleagues in ICM had introduced it at their away day earlier in the year. Hmm, maybe an opportunity for some friendly cross faculty competition? This format requires a student (or PI) to get across the message of their work in exactly 3 minutes, with the timing being strict and the talker being stopped at exactly 3 minutes. Eight students stood up to the challenge and we experienced a range of approaches to get their points across. Congratulations go out to all eight, especially Daira from Jeremy Lakey’s lab who won the judges approval with her demonstration of colicin action with two balloons, some sticky tape and a scary looking needle.

So all in all a great and successful day out for ICaMB, we heard some fantastic science, were able to be social and meet each other while discovering that what you really need to know to win the ICaMB quiz is the maiden name of Cheryl Cole. We have to acknowledge the excellent job done by our quizmaster, Harry Gilbert, although we suspect that Anne Robinson’s job is safe for now. A final big thank you must go to the organising committee who coordinated the whole event (the blog team are just reporting what happened). Well done Alison Howard, Dave Bolam, Liz Veal, Adam O’Neil and to our Director Bob Lightowlers.

*Congratulations also to Henrik Strahl, who a couple of days after his talk was awarded a Newcastle Biomedicine Barbour Fellowship