Postgraduate Newsbite I

 

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

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.

 

The IPA: Run By Postdocs, For Postdocs!

 

The ICaMB Postdoc Association (IPA) was created in 2012.  It’s motto is ‘Run by postdocs, for postdocs’.  Here we have asked the IPA committee to describe what they do and some of the events they have been organising.

 

by the IPA

Post-docs are the engine room of any lab. Let’s face it, we are the ones at the bench doing the experiments that get into those high impact publications (hopefully!). However, in many institutes we are also the forgotten proportion of the scientific workforce. This is something we, the post-docs of ICaMB, are trying to change. Six of us (Alessio, Claire, Jackie, Jill, Luisa and Matt) formed the ICaMB Post-doc Association (IPA) in mid-2012 with a view to bringing the post-docs of our institute together and giving us a voice.  Yes, we want to talk to each other about our science and share our ideas and expertise but the IPA is also about establishing new friendships and having a laugh too.

One of the main aims of the IPA, is to address some of the challenges faced by post-docs today – realistically we know that not all of us will make it to Principal Investigator (PI), or even necessarily want to. So, we have started a seminar series looking at ‘Science Lives’ in which we invite speakers from diverse jobs to talk to the post-docs about their career choices after post-docing. Our first speaker was ICaMB’s very own, Heath Murray, a Royal Society Fellow based in the CBCB. He gave a very honest account of making that transition from post-doc to PI. Heath discussed his personal highs and his love for science, but also the difficulties he faced when applying for Fellowships, together with  the challenges he now faces when carving out his own independent lab.

The next speaker in the series is Andrew Jermy on May 23rd at 4pm. Andrew is the senior microbiology editor at Nature and will come to talk to us about a career in editing and publishing at pretty much the biggest journal in our field. Many of the post-docs in ICaMB have told members of the committee that editing is something they would like to learn about as they consider other career options in science. On the other hand, many of the academic staff are also very excited by the prospect of Andrew coming to ICaMB so they can all show off the great science being done here!

 

An IPA Social

The IPA is also about the post-docs getting to know one another away from the lab…we all like to let our hair down by having a party and some of us even enjoy a glass of wine (or two!). Our first event was a social held at the Forum Café in the CBCB where the ICaMB post-docs based in the Medical School and those in the CBCB could get to know each other. We don’t often get lots of time to interact, being in separate buildings, and everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves!

Our next social event will be at the North Terrace Pub on April 26th starting at 5pm – expect lots of food, drinks, a pub quiz and lots of other fun and games!

The IPA Committee, from left to right, Alessio, Claire, Luisa, Jackie, Jill and Matt

 

If you have any suggestions for themes for future events please get in touch with IPA committee (ipda@newcastle.ac.uk).

 

 

 

 

 

Find the IPA on facebook and look out for the new look ICaMB website coming soon where the Post-docs will have their own section!

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

 

Exploding bacteria for science!!!

As the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, highlights today “danger posed by growing resistance to antibiotics should be ranked along with terrorism on a list of threats to the nation”. Professor Dame Sally Davies said diseases are evolving faster than the drugs that exist to treat them and antibiotic resistance is “a ticking time bomb“.

This is a subject of great interest to scientists in ICaMB, particularly the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology, which brings together a world-class group of scientists researching bacterial physiology and the host response to bacterial infections. A major focus of this research involves:

  • Exploring alternative targets for antibiotic development
  • Understanding how antibiotics attack bacterial cells
  • Investigating how bacteria overcome such an attack

Tonight (March 11th 2013), work from the group of Kenn Gerdes and Etienne Maisonneuve, a post-doc in his group, will be featured on the BBC programme “Bang Goes the Theory” in an episode about Antibiotics.

Kenn and Etienne’s research focuses on persister cells, bacterial cells that can tolerate and survive attack by antibiotics.  Importantly, ALL bacteria analysed so far generate “persister cells” and understanding this is key to understanding how bacteria avoid antibiotic attack. “Bang Goes the Theory” will show a movie showing how these persister cells are identified in a bacterial population.

Penicillin inhibits synthesis of the bacterial cell wall, causing the cell to explode (or ‘lyse’) due to the high pressure inside the cell.  This is why penicillin and similar drugs are very effective in curing infections caused by penicillin-sensitive bacteria. In the movie, see how the cells suddenly explode when penicillin is added but notice how one cell, the persister cells (darker cells not exploding on the left panel) are surviving.

These persister cells evade killing by antibiotics because they grow extremely slowly. Persisters are proposed to be one explanation for infection relapses or chronic infections so Kenn and Ethienne’s work is extremely important for understanding how we should use antibiotics.

Microfluidic chamber used to make the movie

To do this work, Etienne used state-of-the-art technology – microfluidics – to follow the growth of individual bacterial cells under a microscope. These devices are smaller than a penny coin and the chambers where the bacteria are grown can be less than 1 mm across. This technique allows us to grow bacteria in one condition but, at a flip of a switch, change it and watch the response, as seen in the movie.

Year 9 student working on one of CBCB's microscopes

 

CBCB academics have used the ability to explode Escherichia coli to explore the what, when and how of antibiotics with Year 9 school students as part of the University engagement program Leading Edge.

With these students, we have developed a protocol to allow them to observe E. coli in the act of exploding after adding penicillin.

Exploding E. coli. Taken by Seaton Burn Community College Year 9 students

Persistence is not Resistance: It is important to understand the difference between these two terms. Antibiotic resistant and sensitive bacteria are able to generate persister cells, that are not effected by antibiotic attack. Antibiotic Resistance is a trait acquired by the whole population.

The Scientific Specifics: Over the last few years, several scientific breakthroughs made by the Gerdes group have, for the first time, given insight into how bacteria control the switch to slow growth and persistence. Persister cells can survive penicillin because the bacteria hibernate for a period, during which they don’t synthesize their cell wall.  They can then “wake up” when the antibiotic treatment is over, causing a new infection. In young and healthy people this is usually not a problem, because the rare non-growing bacteria are removed by the immune system. However, elderly individuals or those with a weakened immune system, it is often not efficient enough to permit clearance of the rare bacteria that survive the treatment, allowing the infection to “break out”.

The Gerdes group has shown that a certain class of gene that inhibits cell growth are turned on in one cell per 10,000. These discoveries open avenues to generate novel antibiotics and treatment regimes in the future. However, before that, their group is investigating if similar mechanisms allow pathogenic bacteria, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, to evade killing by antibiotics.

 

Institute of Cell and Molecular Biosciences
The Centre For Bacterial Cell Biology
Professor Kenn Gerdes
Bang Goes the Theory
Leading Edge

An academic viewpoint on social media portals

 
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

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

 

In a paper published this week in CellJeff 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 KawaiRomain 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!

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!