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Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB) Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB) October 2017 Newsletter News Roy Goodacre’s lab has developed the world’s first handheld SORS device that can detect fake spirits, such as vodka and whisky, whilst still in their bottles. SORS, or ‘spatially offset Raman spectroscopy’, devices give highly accurate chemical analysis of objects and contents beneath concealing surfaces, such as glass bottles. It works by using ‘an optical approach’ where lasers are directed through the glass, enabling the isolation of chemically-rich information that is held within the spirits. Read more about it here (tinyurl.com/ybncwd8c & tinyurl.com/y7lqg4kh). A number of MIB academics have recently featured in videos highlighting the research happening at Manchester. The first of these has now been released and features Perdita Barran talking about ‘Detecting Parkinsons with Chemistry’. More videos featuring MIB academics will be released in the coming weeks. To see other videos from the School of Chemistry visit: (tinyurl.com/y8lda2z7). Recent Grants Success David Leigh and Simon Webb have been awarded over £3M from the EPSRC for a 5 year Programme Grant entitled, ‘Molecular Robotics’. The total award is for £5.3M and involves collaborations with the University of Bristol, University of Cambridge, AKZO Nobel, Cascade Technologies Ltd, Novo Nordisk and Polyera Corporation. Congratulations to Douglas Kell and Daniela Delneri on the award of a Horizon 2020 EU grant entitled 'OLEFINE: OLEAginus yeast platform for fine chemicals'. The total grant is >€5M of which €441k has been awarded to Manchester. Alan Dickson has been awarded Innovate UK funding with Arecor (Cambridge) for a grant entitled ‘Validation of a novel preclinical development platform to enable high value therapeutic co-formulations’. The total grant value is £915k of which £295k will be coming to Manchester. Publications Congratulations to David Leys, Nick Turner and Nigel Scrutton on their Nature Chemical Biology paper entitled ‘Structures of carboxylic acid reductase reveal domain dynamics underlying catalysis’ (tinyurl.com/ycm74q9v) Congratulations also to Nigel Scrutton for his perspective on ‘Enzymes make light work of hydrocarbon production’ which was published in Science in September (tinyurl.com/yblq6p4z) Alan Dickson was co-author of a Regenerative Medicine publication entitled, ‘Preservation and stability of cell therapy products: Recommendations from an expert workshop’ (tinyurl.com/ycpkv698). Sophia Ananiadou has had a number of recent publications, including: o ‘Data Visualization with Structural Control of Global Cohort and Local Data Neighborhoods’ IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, (tinyurl.com/yarezrvg). o ‘A semi-supervised approach using label propagation to support citation screening’ Journal of Biomedical Informatics, (tinyurl.com/ybpr24es). o ‘Quantifying the Informativeness of Similarity Measurements’ Journal of Machine Learning Research, (tinyurl.com/yd96d84a). o ‘Using uncertainty to link and rank evidence from biomedical literature for model curation’ Bioinformatics (tinyurl.com/yau2wspw). Nigel Scrutton, David Leys, Sam Hay, John Gardiner and Eriko Takano recently collaborated on a publication in ACS Catalysis entitled ‘Structural basis of catalysis in the bacterial monoterpene synthases linalool synthase and 1,8-cineole synthase’ (tinyurl.com/ybjoya4a) Jim Warwicker has had a number of publications recently, including: o ‘Protein-Sol: A web tool for predicting protein solubility from sequence’ Bioinformatics, (tinyurl.com/yd3ts8zc). o ‘Prediction of Reduction Potentials of Copper Proteins with Continuum Electrostatics and Density Functional Theory’ Chemistry (tinyurl.com/y84cv95a). o ‘Charged residues next to transmembrane regions revisited: ‘Positive-inside rule’ is complemented by the negative inside depletion/outside enrichment rule’ BMC Biol. (tinyurl.com/yck7ervx). Recent publications from Sabine Flitsch include the following: o ‘Adenylation Activity of Carboxylic Acid Reductases Enables the Synthesis of Amides’ Angew. Chemie. (tinyurl.com/yafktq56). o ‘Development and application of a highly α2,6-selective pseudosialidase’ ChemRxiv, (tinyurl.com/ya5t2kgt). Prizes and Awards Nigel Scrutton has been appointed Adjunct Professor at Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science & Technology (VISTECH) in Thailand. Douglas Kell was recently appointed Extraordinary (Honorary) Professor in the Department of Physiological Science at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Congratulations to Kamila Pacholarz from the Barran lab, who won the travel award prize at the 2017 AMS conference. Events Sabine Flitsch hosted the workshop 'Bioactive Polysaccharides' at Clare College, Cambridge in mid- September which was attended by ~75 delegates from academia and industry from across the UK, Europe and India. This activity was jointly supported by IBCarb and BioCatNet NIBB as well as receiving BBSRC International Workshop funding. In September BioProNET coordinated a week-long BBSRC Bioprocessing Skills Training School with the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), which was attended by 15 early careers 15 delegates from across academia and industry in the UK. Andrew Doig spoke at the Calderdale 6th Form Conference in July, on 'Death and Dementia'. The event was attended by 400 year 12 students. Social Responsibility The “Making a Difference” Awards are a university-wide initiative to celebrate the impact our staff, students, alumni and external partners are having on the social well-being of our communities and wider society and offer the opportunity to share best practice about social responsibility initiatives and encourage others to get involved. This year Nick Weise from the MIB received a commended award from the judges for the “Development of a Public Engagement Programme for the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology”. Date for your diary The next MIB Open Day is taking place on Friday 24 November 2017. On that day MIB will once again open its doors to A/AS level students from across Greater Manchester. During the visit the students will have an opportunity to visit the MIB laboratories, hear about our research, and explore interactive science stands in the MIB atrium. .
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