Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB)

October 2018 Newsletter News

has been appointed Chair of Systems Biology in the Institute of Integrative Biology at the . Douglas and his research group arrived in Manchester in 2002, and moved into MIB in 2006; during his time here he also served as Chief Executive, BBSRC from 2008-2013. Douglas will join the University of Liverpool on 1 December 2018 and will also retain a part-time position as Associated Scientific Director at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Biosustainability at the Technical University of Denmark.

 On 1 November 2018 Roy Goodacre will be taking up the position of Chair in Biological Chemistry in the Institute of Integrative Biology at the University of Liverpool. Roy established the Laboratory for Bioanalytical Spectroscopy in UMIST when he arrived in February 2003, and his research group moved to the MIB in 2006. During his time in Manchester he helped establish for long-term studies and employed these GC-MS and LC-MS methods for clinical and plant studies, as well as for understanding microbial systems. He also focussed on developing surface enhanced Raman scattering and for absolute quantification of metabolites and drugs in human biofluids. Roy initiated the journal Metabolomics and helped establish the Metabolomics Society.

Recent Grant Success

 Nick Turner along with Nigel Scrutton, Sabine Flitsch and Perdita Barran have been awarded a prestigious EPSRC Prosperity Partnership to establish the Centre for Biocatalytic Manufacture of New Modalities (CBNM) supported by AstraZeneca and Prozomix. The total project value is £4.56M with over £1M cash contribution from the industrial partners. The project starts in January 2019.

 Congratulations to Daniela Delneri on securing a 2 year KTP award with Cloudwater Brew to improve spontaneous fermentations, develop new products with novel yeast strains, and quantify and improve flavour profiles.

 Congratulations to Lu Shin Wong on his recent EPSRC award for £450K entitled ‘Biocatalytic Approaches to the Synthetic Manipulation of Silicones’. The award is in collaboration with Peter Taylor (The Open University), Peter Quayle (Chemistry) and Stephen Yeates (Chemistry).

Prizes and Awards

 Congratuations to Paul Popelier who was awarded the inaugural Bader Prize by the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) in July for his exceptional contributions in the development of pure and applied Quantum Chemical Topology (QCT).

 Congratulations to Fabio Parmeggiani (Turner/Flitsch group) who was recently awarded the Medal Ciamician 2018. It is one of the most prestigious annual awards given to an outstanding Italian chemist under the age of 40.

 Congratulations to Patrick Cai, who was recently elected to be a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong. This is a prestigious award, as HKU only appoints three visiting professor across all disciplines globally every year.

 Congratualtions to Samina Naseeb from Daniela Delneri’s lab, who was awarded a Fellowship in August by the School of Biological Sciences in recognition of her academic success.

Publications

 Congratulations to Paul Popelier, whose single-author paper broke through the 1000-citation barrier (according to Google Scholar). The paper is entitled “Characterization of a dihydrogen bond on the basis of the electron density” (tinyurl.com/y6uy68ae).

 A recent paper entitled “Defining informative priors for ensemble modelling in systems biology” by Rainer Breitling’s lab has been accepted and is currently in press in Nature Protocols: (tinyurl.com/y8lcvjq6).

 Patrick Cai has had a number of publications recently which have been featured in news articles, see: tinyurl.com/ydfsf7qj, tinyurl.com/y8hps9fl, tinyurl.com/yd7u9tw3, tinyurl.com/y9qcwwln

Events

 Andy Munro and Derren Heyes organised the 2018 Tetrapyrrole Discussion Group meeting in MIB on 6 and 7 September. The meeting was attended by over 50 participants from around the UK and provided an ideal environment for younger researchers to present their work in the area of tetrapyrrole research. A number of MIB post-docs and PhD students took the opportunity to present and gave a range of excellent talks

 As part of the IBCarb Network, Sabine Flitsch hosted Glycobiotechnology 2018 on 3 and 4 September 2018 in Manchester. The event was attended by approx. 180 IBCarb members from academia and industry. Read more about it here (tinyurl.com/yb8z29vs).

 In July, the Centre of Excellence in Biopharmaceuticals (COEBP) led by Alan Dickson, coordinated and co-hosted the annual Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) Formulation meeting at MIB, attracting over 80 attendees from academia and industry.

 As part of the BBSRC-funded week-long training event, Strategic Training Awards for Research Skills (STARS) Bioprocessing for Industry (9-14 September), Alan Dickson and Joanne Flannelly coordinated and organized the BioProNET event at the Centre for Process innovation (CPI), Darlington which was attended by 18 early career researchers.

Social Responsibility

 Jolanda van Munster shared her passion for science during the Soapbox Science in Sheffield on 22 September, where she stood on a soapbox and spoke to passers-by about how fungi break down plant biomass and help us make better biofuels.

 MIB returned for a third year to represent the at New Scientist Live at the ExCel Centre in London, alongside other exhibitors such as BP and the European Space Agency. Twenty two researchers manned the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology’s stand, using fun, hands on activities about DNA, genetic modification and various flavours and fragrance compounds to tell the general public about the University’s Industrial Biotechnology research beacon and synthetic biology research for more sustainable production of fine chemicals.

 On 19 October, MIB will host the world’s first laboratories to receive Carbon Literacy training. The University’s ‘Carbon Literacy for Labs’ initiative, the first of its kind, will deliver highly relevant, value-led climate change learning to lab staff and students in the MIB, driving low-carbon choices and ways of thinking. To sign up your lab or register your interest for this training please contact project lead [email protected]. For general information about The Carbon Literacy Project, visit www.carbonliteracy.com