The recent ENV and BIO paper in the Journal of Applied Ecology has been picked up by Nature as a Research Highlight.

Nature - Research Highlights

Students participating in a prestigious international biology competition have produced a video looking at how synthetic biology could have an impact on future healthcare.

Seven students from UEA and the Norwich Research Park will participate in a prestigious international biology competition in Amsterdam in October. One of the main aims of the video is to encourage people to consider ethical issues that are raised by synthetic biology. The NRP UEA team will compete in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition along with 192 other teams from across the world. The 55 European teams will compete in the regional jamboree in Amsterdam on October 5-7, with selected teams going forward to the worldwide finals that take place in the USA in November. Biomedicine students Russell Gritton, Joy Edwards-Hicks and Lukas Harnisch have joined forces with molecular biology and genetics undergraduates Khadija Ouadi, Rachel Dobson and Rebecca Lo, and biologist Pacsoe Harvey to form the Norfolk group.

The European final of iGEM takes place on October 5-7 at six universities across Amsterdam. The winners from that final will progress to the world championships in Boston, Massachusetts on November 2-5.

New salt marshes created as part of managed coastal realignment are failing to meet European conservation regulations, according to a new study by the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Under the EU Habitats Directive, new salt marsh must be created each time natural salt marsh is lost to coastal development or to coastal erosion caused by sea-level rise. The new marshes must display “equivalent biological characteristics” to their natural counterparts - but the new findings, published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology, reveal that artificially created salt marshes suffer significantly reduced biodiversity.

The study was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and carried out by researchers from UEA’s schools of Environmental Sciences and Biological Sciences.

‘Does managed coastal realignment create salt marshes with “equivalent biological characteristics” to natural reference sites?’ by Hannah Mossman (UEA), Anthony Davy (UEA) and Alastair Grant (UEA) is published online by the Journal of Applied Ecology on September 20 2012. The paper is available here.

IMAGE: Sea lavender (Limonium vulgare) is conspicuous on a natural salt marsh at Holkham, Norfolk. This species is one of those notably deficient in marshes created by managed coastal realignment. PHOTO CREDIT: David CJ White.

Sex can trigger remarkable female responses including altered fertility, immunity, libido, eating and sleep patterns - by the activation of diverse sets of genes, according to research led by Prof Tracey Chapman from UEA's school of Biological Sciences.

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The Prostate Cancer Foundation has awarded $1m to the University of East Anglia, including Prof Colin Cooper of BIO/MED, and the Institute of Food Research to study the protective effects of broccoli consumption against prostate cancer.

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Photo: Prof Colin Cooper from UEA’s School of Biological Sciences and Norwich Medical School.

Having healthy gut bacteria could have as much to do with a strategy that insurance companies use to uncover risk as with eating the right foods - according to Biology Lecturer Dr Doug Yu at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Photo: John Davey/Flickr

The NRP UEA Norwich presentation for the iGEM UK Hangout, which we hosted at Google Campus last Friday (Aug 17th) can now be viewed on YouTube.

The NRP UEA team consists of 7 BIO Undergraduates.

Synthetic Biology is a rapidly growing scientific field in which living organisms and systems are bespoke engineered to create novel materials, fuels, medicines and bio-computational systems. The internationally genetically engineered machines (iGEM) competition, organised by MIT, USA is the world's largest Synthetic Biology competition. The competition was created to inspire interdisciplinary research teams to create the biological and software technologies needed to develop this rapidly growing field.

View on YouTube or follow on Twitter: @NRPiGEM #igemUKmeetup

Andy Ripley was a UEA undergrad in the 1960’s who went on to be a star in the England rugby teams of the 1970’s. He was an exceptional all-round sportsman and athlete who sadly died from prostate cancer in 2010.

In his memory, Julian and Jo Chisholm gathered a 70-strong group of UEA alumni and friends together at Intech in Winchester on Saturday for a fundraising dinner and raffle in support of prostate cancer research at UEA. 

The goal was to raise funds to support a PhD research studentship in Andy’s name, to carry out research on the molecular genetics of prostate cancer and genome-based diagnostics, working with Profs Colin Cooper and Dylan Edwards. The evening was a huge success and a lot of fun was had by all involved. Tim Lovett (a BIO alumnus) led a charity auction and the evening concluded with a show in the amazing Intech planetarium. 

Further donations are most welcome, and whether your donation is large or small, regular or one-off, your support can make a real difference.

If you wish to make a regular donation to the Andy Ripley Memorial Fund by direct debit, please download and print a donation form (PDF 84 KB). Please print and send your completed form to Eleanor Crawford, Annual Fund Officer, Development Office, Broadview Lodge, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ. Alternatively, you can make a one-off gift by using our secure online donation form or over the telephone by calling Eleanor Crawford on 01603 593776.

To find out more about the Annual Fund, please email annualfund@uea.ac.uk. 

Thank you, in advance, for any help you can offer.

July 12 and 13 saw the BIO teaching laboratories transformed into a Crime scene and Crime lab, as some year 11 & 12’s from Springwood High school/Sixth Form in Kings Lynn came to investigate.

The day started with the students interviewing suspects and witnesses, before investigating the crime scene of an “unexplained death”!

They then worked through a variety of different laboratory techniques, including fingerprinting, microscopy, microbiology, DNA digests & chemical tests. They were also able to view some CCTV of the lab, which showed some very suspicious looking characters coming and going!

At the end of the day and half, all groups had successfully managed to prove, with hard evidence, which suspect was responsible! The culprit was then apprehended and removed from the lab by UEA’s very own security team!

All involved; both students, teachers & staff alike, had a thoroughly good time!

Sam Fountain's lab at the School of Biological Sciences (UEA) have discovered a 'constant cloud' of potent inflammatory molecules surrounding the cells responsible for diseases such as thickening of the arteries and rheumatoid arthritis.

Published online today by The Journal of Cell Science, the findings could eventually lead to new treatments for chronic inflammatory diseases. Cardiovascular disease arising from atherosclerosis (thickening of the arteries) kills around 17 million people worldwide each year, including 120,000 people in England and Wales, while rheumatoid arthritis affects around 400,000 people in the UK.

The UEA team studied a type of white blood cell called monocytes. Monocytes play an important role in the human immune system and help protect our bodies against infection. But they can also invade tissue, triggering the early stages of common inflammatory diseases.

The researchers detected for the first time that monocytes were surrounded by a constant cloud. This cloud was found to be made up of potent inflammatory molecules called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. Further study showed that the ATP molecules were being propelled through the cell wall by the actions of lysosomes. Lysosomes are sub-cellular compartments within blood cells which had previously been thought to only break down cell waste.

“These unexpected findings shed light on the very early stages in the development of inflammatory diseases such as atherosclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis,” said lead author Dr Samuel Fountain of UEA’s School of Biological Sciences.

“We found that lysosomes are actually highly dynamic and play a key role in the way inflammatory cells function. This is an exciting development that we hope will lead to the discovery of new targets for inflammatory drugs in around five years and potential new treatments beyond that.”

Dr Fountain said further study was now needed to investigate how to control the release of ATP by lysosomes in monocytes and other white blood cells, and to understand how inflammation may be affected in patients with inherited diseases involving lysosomes.

Dr Fountain is a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) David Phillips Fellow and recently received £0.9m from the BBSRC to study how cells use ATP as a signalling molecule.

‘Constitutive lysosome exocytosis releases ATP and engages P2Y receptors in human monocytes’ by V Sivaramakrishnan (UEA), S Bidula (UEA), H Campwala (UEA), D Katikaneni (UEA) and S Fountain (UEA) is published online on July 5 by the Journal of Cell Science. The paper will be available here: http://jcs.biologists.org/content/early/recent

Picture: A scanning electron microscope image of human blood showing red blood cells and several infection-fighting white blood cells including a monocyte

Credit: US National Cancer Institute/Bruce Wetzel/Harry Schaefer