Soapboxing Science in the Sun

Posted on 23 June, 2017 by Kevin

On a bright, sunny day in Newcastle, Soapbox Science took place on 17th June for the third time in Newcastle’s Monument, supported by the Newcastle University Faculty of Medical Sciences Engagement Team, and by the organising team from the Institute for Cell and Molecular Biosciences.

During the event, Grey Street was converted into an area for lively discussion of scientific subjects between researchers and the general public. Inspired by Hyde Park Corner‘s political debates, our scientists stood on soapboxes wearing lab coats and communicated their work to the passing crowds. There were no microphones, PowerPoint presentations, or posters, only materials from everyday life to support the scientific talks.

Two researchers from the Institute for Cell and Molecular Biosciences, Professor Janet Quinn and postgraduate student Clare Willis, had been selected for a speaker’s role in the event, along with a number of other researchers in diverse scientific fields. Prof. Janet Quinn and her topic “Killer Fungus” grabbed the attention of many younger onlookers by creating Candida, Schizosaccharomyces and other representatives of the fungal Kingdom from colourful Play-Doh in Petri dishes. Clare Willis demonstrated the possibility for survival of a living organism for thousands of years as part of her topic: “Spores: the ultimate survivors”. An air balloon represented the bacterial cell as a target for antibiotics, easily destroyed by a pin, with an unbreakable bacterial spore shown as a much more resilient tennis ball.

A number of volunteers from the Institute for Cell and Molecular Biosciences actively participated in the event. Here, we’ve compiled comments from a few of those who contributed to making the day a success.

Yana performing her duties as part of the evaluation team, gathering data from Soapbox visitors

Yana Wade, researcher in the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology and Soapbox Science volunteer:

“During my stay at Newcastle University, the secondment host for my Marie Curie Individual Fellowship, I had the fantastic opportunity to be involved in the Soapbox Science festival both as a public engagement volunteer and as part of the evaluation team. As an active researcher I understand the importance of communicating with the public to highlight exactly what scientists do behind the doors of the laboratory, and how they tackle issues that are having a major impact in our daily lives.

The challenges given to the speaker’s at this event were: as an outstanding scientist performing cutting edge research, would it be possible to explain the complex scientific topics to a non-expert audience?Would it be realistic to grab the attention of the general public out shopping on a busy central street who are normally put-off by the often challenging ideas presented by science? Could the scientists explain their research that could capture the imagination of primary school children?

Nevertheless, the presenters at Soapbox Science successfully achieved these goals. Instead of a purely academic presentation of their work, they shared their passion about science by demonstrating how exciting, interesting and important science is in solving immediate and longer term problems faced by society. The event also provided an opportunity for the public to interact directly with scientists in an informal and friendly setting.

The other fascinating aspect of the event was the aim to promote women in science. The female speakers, comprising different academic levels from student to professor, demonstrated their accomplishments in state-of-the-art research, and represented an example of a successful career path for budding scientists in academia. These brilliant girls are addressing the gender-related stereotypes in science.

Our Soapbox speakers were delighted with the public response

By participating in this event as a volunteer, it gave me the means to contribute to bringing science to society in an open and understandable way. I was able to question people who took part in the event and gather feedback that will help evaluate the impact and perception of the topics covered and how they think the subjects could help in shaping society, but also, more generally, to improve the event in the future.

Given my experience, I would like to encourage people to support the Soapbox Science by actively participating in the future.”

Rashmi Bhardwaj-Gosling, PhD student in the Institute for Health & Society, and Soapbox speaker:

Rashmi speaks from her Soapbox

“I had a great afternoon speaking at the event. Speaking to the general public was such a novel and refreshing approach for me in comparison to speaking to my usual audience! Soapbox Science is such a great idea where instead of waiting for the public to come to us, we got out there and took our science to the streets. The audience was very engaging and genuinely interested in finding out about my research work on urinary catheters and what can be done to avoid the catheter related infections. It was brilliantly organised event and weather certainly helped to captivate the crowd. So well done to everyone who took part and in organising the event.”

Clare Willis, researcher in CBCB and Soapbox speaker:

“Soapbox Science was a fantastic event. As a speaker I really enjoyed the challenge of having to explain my research in simple easy-to-understand ways, making it accessible, interesting and exciting to a public audience. I got some great questions and I think my talk really got the public thinking. I feel I’ve made Newcastle a little more knowledgeable about my topic, bacterial spores!”

Clare on her Soapbox, presenting her science to the public

Katherine Jacques and Helen Atkinson, Faculty of Medical Sciences Engagement Team and Soapbox organisers:

“We really enjoyed organising Soapbox Science this year and had a great time on the day. The enthusiasm from the speakers and volunteers to engage with the public was fantastic and it was wonderful to see so many people stopping to listen and ask questions.

We would like to say a big thank you to the speakers, volunteers and our fellow organisers for their contribution and making the day a huge success. We’re already looking forward to another successful Soapbox Science event for next year!”

You can also read a blog post from one of this year’s speakers, Luiza Andrade, on MicrobeBlog from the Society for Applied Microbiology here.

Discovery at the Discovery Museum

Aside

Great Hall

Ready to replicate the success of last year’s Away Day, it was en masse outing time for ICaMB again! Time to find out who all the new faces are, and to find out exactly what that person you have a ‘hello and a nod in the corridor’ relationship with actually does at the bench all day. This year we headed to the Great Hall of the Discovery Museum. Despite the leaking roof caused by the downpour outside and the sometimes dodgy acoustics the day was still a success.

Serious faces, this is science

ICaMB is a fast paced, constantly evolving institute. Everybody is busy with their own research, making a break and a get-together once in a while a vital part of reminding ourselves of the vast range of expertise and diverse set of interests beavering away in our labs and offices. The answer to that tricky problem or that elusive technique is quite possibly just a few yards away.

But also fun!

With that in mind, this year’s Away Day felt particularly important as we welcomed 8 new academic groups to ICaMB from CAV (Campus for Aging and Vitality) as well new IRES fellows and a list of other recent recruits. Drs Victor Korolchuk and Gabi Saretzki from the CAV both spoke at the away day about their interests in neurodegenerative diseases and the role of oxidative stress in the ageing process.

As ever the day was kicked off by the Institute director, Bob (Professor Robert Lightowlers), who gave us a taster of ICaMB’s growth and success stories over the past year. Without breaking into the tune of that well known Christmas song; 7 Vacation Studentships, 6 BBSRC awards, 5 MRC awards, 2 Wolfson awards, 2 Senior Investigator awards and 1 Henry Dale ………. Not to mention all the promotions, outstanding research papers and commercial contracts = 1 happy Bob.

A cell-tastic morning then ensued: the completely dispensable nature of bacterial cell walls (Professor Jeff Errington); the role of NF-kB in the pathogenesis of lymphoma (Dr Jill Hunter); and the cell death independent functions of inhibitors of apoptosis (new IRES recruit Dr Niall Kenneth). The session was wrapped up by Dr Paula Salgado summarising 3.5 years of structural C. difficile research in 15min. Some feat Paula!

Of course just as last year, an absolute highlight of the day were the six, animated, three minute thesis presentations by our brave PhD students …….. Soon to be followed by the look of horror on several Professorial faces when it was suggested by PAN!C that at next year’s Away Day we have a session of 3 minute PI pitches! We can’t ignore the demands of our PhD students now can we? And congratulations to Mandeep Atwal from the Cowell/Austin lab who against steep competition was awarded the prize for best three minute thesis.

The possibilities of alginate bread?

A spot of oxidative stress and the evolution of peroxidases by Dr Alison Day, and some lunch completed the morning’s discovery. Though half an hour later and Dr Peter Chater had us all wishing we’d had an alginate packed lunch (and a go with the model gut!). Perhaps the Pearson lab can cater next year’s event? If it’s good enough for the One Show it’s good enough for the ICaMB Away Day.

A major focus of the Away Day is not just to learn about the breadth of exciting research carried out in our institute, but also to learn all about the very latest techniques and expertise ripe for exploitation. This year the focal point of new techniques came from Dr Alex Laude and the Bio-Imaging facility, with some beautiful images and super resolution microscopy techniques, which again left a number of the audience wanting a turn!

An afternoon transcribing and translating with Dr Danny Castro-Roa; learning about how the crucial nature of cell polarity means we really don’t mix up our arse from our elbow (thank you new IRES recruit Dr Josana Rodriguez); and last but by no means least, how on earth all that DNA manages to faithfully copy and repackage itself time after time from yet another new recruit, Professor Jonathan Higgins.

This completes our diverse and entertaining line-up, just leaving enough time for complementary wine, and the amusement as speakers and audience alike embarrass themselves at the ICaMB quiz (and I hear also in the pub afterwards).

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!

ICaMB at the British Science Festival

Posted on 19 September, 2013 by Paula

by Paula Salgado

Last week saw Newcastle streets invaded by scientists, science-minded and science-curious crowds, all enjoying a very diverse, intense and exciting British Science Festival. This is a unique opportunity for different cities in the UK to showcase the best science they produce and Newcastle was no exception. Many ICaMB students and staff took on the challenge, putting on a great show for all to enjoy. Some of their work even made it to an ITV Tyne news report (at 0:22):

If you missed the events, here’s a short recap.

“Do I look good in these genes?” – Prof John Hesketh, Prof Carlo Celis-Morales (IAH)

This debate on the perspectives of personalised nutritional advice based on genetic information, combined science and drama to explore the different aspects of the issues involved. It sparkled interest from participants as well as the media, bringing John’s research to a broader audience, as he explains.

Packed audience at the debate

Together with Carlo Celis-Morales (IAH), I organised a debate around issues of using genetic information to personalise nutritional advise based on genetics. We worked with a theatre group – November Club – to use drama to help highlight some of the issues to a general audience. Two external speakers gave a FOR and AGAINST view of using such personalised genetic advise and I chaired the event.

“Puzzles of Infections” – Dr Paula Salgado, Dr Arnaud Basle, Adam Crawshaw, Chris Hoyland, Dr Will Stanley

NSBL team (Chris, Adam, Paula, Arnaud) ready to show the world of protein structures

Dr Paula Salgado and a team from Newcastle Structural Biology Lab – Dr Arnaud Basle, Dr Will Stanley, Adam Crawshaw and Chris Hoyland – organised an activity where children and adults explored the world of protein structures.

Protein structure is not the easiest concept to grasp for most audiences, so we used a very “hands-on” approach. Children and adults had a chance to grow their own protein crystals, play with 3D printed protein models and “giant microbes” from which our proteins of interest come from and use the latest 3D screen technology to see “inside” our protein structures. This allowed us to explain how we solve the puzzle of proteins’ shapes and how it relates to their function, explained Paula.

“Epifection” – Dr Phil Aldridge and others

Phil Aldridge with Nick Jakubovics (Dentistry), Colin Gillespie (Maths and Stats), Mark Shirley (Biology), Kate Hudson (University Engagement Manager), Rose Wu (Science Festival and Engagement Coordinator) and Roots and Wings developed an interactive simulation of a virtual outbreak that hit the North East.

Epifection ran throughout the Festival and was accessed via smartphones, tablets and browsers of any origin. We had approximately 400 people register and interact with epifection. Our aim was to raise awareness of the decisions we need to make if a potentially life threatening outbreak were to occur. Epifection was not solely an online event but was designed to explore the benefits of using digital technology to compliment traditional engagement activities. Along with the simulation we ran a very successful public debate on the need for vaccine and treatment, the build the bug (lego) workshop and a survivors party.

“Build the Bug” – Prof Jeremy Lakey, Dr Phil Aldridge and others

Jeremy Lakey and Phil Aldridge together with helpers put on five “Build the Bug” sessions, which were associated with the Epifection simulated epidemic. Participants, which included families on Sunday, school kids on Tuesday and adults at the Epifection survivors party at the Tyneside Cinema, had to build a superbug out of LEGO.

Participants were given a crash course in what a bacterium needs to survive (funnily enough, outer membrane proteins and flagella were emphasised) and then told to get on with it. They also had to pack in as much DNA (string) as possible. There were some amazing designs and insights, such as a boy who suggested that his bacteria had small molecules (toxins!) that they released to cause disease where the bacteria could not go and a girl who designed a “bluetooth bacterium”, which communicated with its friends and only caused the disease when there were enough of them around (Quorum sensing!). IRES candidates 2025? wonders Jeremy.

“Why our tummies wave at us” – Dr Vanessa Armstrong, Dr Chris Baldwin, Dr Geoff Bosson, Joy Hardyman, Claire Whitworth and others

Joy (ICaMB), Claire (ICaMB), Holly (Institute of Neuroscience) and Rachelle (BioMedical Sciences) showing the cuddly versions of tummy bugs

Organised by the School of Biomedical Sciences, this workshop was part of the Young People’s programme (pg. 7) and aimed at children aged 7-10.

According to Joy: Children learned what happens to the food we eat, what bacteria look like and how some bacteria keep us healthy but some can also make us ill. They were also able to see how well they were washing their hands using UV gel / lighting, and how to make an oral rehydration solution to rehydrate themselves should they get a tummy bug! I was really surprised how well behaved all the children were and how much they already knew about ‘bugs’. It was a great opportunity to build on my confidence around children (as I’ve always found them quite terrifying!) and to practice bringing science to the correct level to suit the public. As expected, the more interactive the activity, the more they enjoyed it – and I found the whole experience good fun and a nice change from being in the lab!

“Fascinated by Food” – Dr Tom Williams, Dr Tomas Kloosterman and others (Marie Curie Fellows)

Tomas killing some Lactococci with an antibiotic

Marie Curie fellows at Newcastle University Tom Williams (ICaMB), Tomas Kloosterman (CBCB), Marianna Obrist (Culture Lab/School of Computing Science) and Sabrina Pietrobono (History, Classics & Archaeology) organised a workshop in the Young People’s programme (pg. 11).

The workshop “Fascinated by food” aimed to explore different aspects of food including the role of microbes in producing and consuming food, expression of taste experiences together with the importance of landscape and culture in influencing food production, explained Tom.

“Inhalation Station” – Sarah Rice, Sarah Billington, Livingstone Fultang, Anna Stanton, Git Chung, Gemma Crossfield, Nichola Conlon, Mark Turner

Sarah explaining the anatomy of the lungs

Inhalation station was a workshop set up to teach Key Stage 2 children about lungs and how we breathe. They tells us more about it.

The workshop started with a brief explanation of the anatomy and physiology of the lungs, using a real pair of pigs lungs! The children then applied this knowledge to three fun workstations i) Aircraft: where model lungs were created, ii) Air Force: where their lung volume was measured using a spirometer, and iii) Question-Air: a quiz of interesting and unusual facts about the lungs. The kids had fun gaining knowledge about the respiratory system and engaging in hands on learning activities. Inhalation Station was rated 5/5 by both the pupils and their teachers.

“Leading Edge – Newcastle Science seen by Students” Dr Phil Aldridge and others

Leading edge is an aspirational scheme coordinated by Phil Aldridge, Sarah Lickess and Felicity Hunter. Twelve schools were involved in projects run by academics from across SAGE and FMS including from ICaMB Jeremy Brown, Jeremy Lakey and Phil.

For the festival, the Leading Edge schools were asked to describe their projects from their perspective in poster format. These posters were integrated into a professionally designed exhibit for the hands-on / drop-in zone of the young peoples program (pg. 14). Each day up to 500 school children past through this zone where we challenged them to a short quiz with questions such as “What organ of our body is like Dr Who?” Ans: Your liver as it can regenerate. A short documentary was also produced by the Leading Edge team that will be publicly available for viewing soon on their own blog.

International Images for Science Exhibition Opening – Prof Rick Lewis, Prof Jeremy Lakey

Prof Jeremy Lakey and Prof Rick Lewis were invited by the Royal Photographic Society and the Science and Techonology Facility Council (STFC) to attend the opening of the International Images for Science Exhibition 2013, at the Hancock Museum. Rick tells us more:

The exhibition contained about 100 images covering a vast range of subjects, from cosmic dust to bacteria, captured using a range of different imaging techniques.The image displayed is an X-ray image of a Blaschka glass jelly-fish. The Blaschkas were a father-and-son team of glass artists who devoted most of their careers to producing glass models of marine invertebrates. When they died, their technique died with them, and by imaging their works in different forms of light, it is hoped that their long-lost technical skills will be brought back to life once more. The exhibition is free, and is well worth a visit, as highlighted by the BBC. Open until September 30th.

“What’s Hiding in Your Mouth?” – Jill Robinson and others

Jill Robinson, a PhD student in Dr. Jakubovics‘ lab, was part of a group from the Centre for Oral Health Research (COHR) at the School of Dental Sciences that ran the “What’s Hiding In Your Mouth?” event as part of the Family Day on Sunday 8th September. She told us more:

The event was mainly aimed at educating children on the importance of oral health, the balance needed between microorganisms and the immune system, and how there are bugs in the mouth that are both good and bad. I was helping out with some microscopy, allowing children and adults to take samples of their own plaque and cheek cells, to look at under the phase contrast and confocal microscopes.

Links

British Science Festival http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/british-science-festival
British Science Association http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/

Leading the Way… in Protein Structure

Posted on 5 July, 2013 by Paula

By Kevin Waldron

This week, ICaMB welcomed the Leading the Way winners into our labs for an exciting day of science. As you may remember from our previous post a couple of weeks ago, Leading the Way was ICaMB and Leading Edge’s collaborative pilot scheme to take some of ICaMB’s great science (and early career scientists) into a local school, George Stephenson High School in Killingworth. That week was a great success, inspiring all of its participants: students, teachers and ICaMB members alike.

The overall winners during the week in GSHS were the AU team, made up of Lucy Hainsworth, Libby Macpherson, Rebecca Brown, Lauren Rhodes, Abbey Wrightson, Kimberley Stoker, Sophie Anson, Connor Little, Nathan Clapperton. AU designed an outstanding poster to illustrate how the prion protein represents a biomarker of mad cow disease (or, more scientifically, variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, vCJD), how the structure of this protein changes from the ‘normal’ form to the ‘abnormal’, disease-causing form, and how knowing the structure of the prion protein can enable us to design a diagnostic test.

AU’s prize was to spend a day in an ICaMB laboratory, learning about how we determine the structure of a protein, with the members of the judging panel, Dave Bolam, Paula Salgado and myself.

After a brief welcome and introduction, we kitted our guests out in fetching lab coats, supplied them with ‘Leading the Way’ lab books and got started.

Showing the kids how to plate cells on a petri dish

First, the kids tried their hands at microbiology with the Waldron lab, streaking E. coli cells onto agar plates and then picking colonies to inoculate cultures for recombinant protein production.

Practising to become a PhD student, staring at a pouring column…

Next, Dave Bolam and his team demonstrated how a His-tagged protein can be purified using affinity chromatography, and then the kids loaded each of their protein samples on SDS-PAGE gels. Remarkably, all of the students successfully purified their target protein, though it’s worth noting that this was not actually the prion protein, PrPC (Imagine the risk assessment!).

“Here, let me help you” says Dave.

“It was great fun spending time with enthusiastic kids and giving them a flavour of what we do. It reminds you why you do science in the first place“, says Dave after taking part in this type of activity for the first time.

“We’re doing science now, Miss!” – shouted one of the students

The day finished with a demonstration of protein crystallisation with Paula Salgado and Will Stanley of the Structural Biology Laboratory. The students attempted to crystallise lysozyme (with mixed success), and then observed protein crystals under the microscope.

“It’s always great to share our love for science with young minds and see them get really excited about carrying out the experiments we do routinely. It’s a breath of fresh air in the lab. Hopefully we’ve given them an experience to remember, as well as a better understanding of research in a biomedical institute.” commented Paula at the end of the day.

Although this was a high-paced tutorial in protein production and structure determination – a process that usually takes at least several weeks, and in some extreme cases an entire career – the students received a hands-on demonstration of some real-life research techniques. We all hope that this experience, even at such an early age, might just implant the idea of a future in science for some of these young people.

But from my own perspective, I can say that their enthusiasm has been infectious (no pun intended), and is a timely reminder of why I got into science in the first place – because at school I always found science classes more interesting than any others. I would have loved such an opportunity when I was that age.

Thanks go to Phil Aldridge, ICaMB’s Leading the Way coordinator, all of the members of the Waldron, Salgado and Bolam labs who helped out during the visit, the staff of George Stephenson High, and most of all to the members of the AU team, for making the day a success.

Links

Leading the Way https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/leadingedge/category/leading-the-way/blog-posts/

Leading Edge https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/leadingedge/

George Stephenson High School http://www.gshs.org.uk/home

An academic viewpoint on social media portals

Posted on 7 March, 2013 by Paula

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

ICaMB – Inside Cells and Molecules Blog

Tag Archives: Science communication