Over the summer, four of our PhD students began their three-month placements at the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory (the ‘Megalab’ in Leamington Spa), as part of its new pilot scheme to support the prestigious Midlands Integrative Bioscience Training Partnership (MIBTP).

The Rosalind Franklin Laboratory processes thousands of COVID-19 tests a day and, once genomic sequencing has been rolled out, will play an indispensable role in responding to new variants of concern. If the laboratory’s PhD pilot is successful, it will be offered to all five universities in the MIBTP.

See the Warwick Community Engagement webpage for further information.

Recent MIBTP Warwick graduate Dr Marisa Di Monaco has won the SEM Faculty Thesis Prize for her thesis 'Molecular mechanisms and transcriptional regulation of autophagy in Drosophila'. Marisa was supervised by Professor Ioannis Nezis and Dr Alex Jones.

Final year Birmingham student Ilyas was named first author of a very comprehensive review on tripartite efflux pumps and type 1 secretion systems, published in Chemical Reviews at the end of April: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.chemrev.1c00055

Dr Harun Rashid, a member of the first MIBTP cohort, has recently published two further papers as a result of his research:

1. Cheng, W., Rashid, H.A., Stark, R. and Thomas, B. 2021. The role of organ – and daylength - specific gene expression and resource management in onion (Allium cepa L.). Scientia Horticulturae, 286: 110223. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2021.110223

2. Cheng, W., Rashid, M.H.A. and Thomas, B. 2021. Changes in the expression of photoperiodic bulbing genes in response to increasing daylength in long-day and short-day onion varieties. The Journal of Horticultural Science and Biotechnology,https://doi.org/10.1080/14620316.2021.1928556

Final year Warwick student Holly is named first author on a recent published paper based on her PhD research: https://sfamjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1462-2920.15451 

2nd year Warwick student Chris published a paper as a result of his mini-project looking at single-cell analysis of a new promoter system for recombinant protein production in E. coli, in collaboration with Doug Browning and Steve Busby (University of Birmingham). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871678421000583

Final year Birmingham MIBTP student Joanna has published her first first author paper looking at mitochondrial dynamics in plants, and using social networks to gain insight why these organelles move the way they do:

https://www.cell.com/cell-systems/fulltext/S2405-4712(21)00133-2

Christian, a final year student on the MIBTP programme, based at Warwick, has published a new paper based on his PhD research:

https://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/10/6/556

Matt Jones, MIBTP Warwick 3rd year student has published two published papers as a result of his PhD research:

A (co)first author review on biases in RNA sequencing:

https://academic.oup.com/bib/advance-article/doi/10.1093/bib/bbab148/6265204

And the peer reviewed version of a preprint that was on the news page (2 years ago!)

https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-020-02227-5

Sabeeha Malek, MIBTP Warwick 2019 student, has had two papers published as a result of her PhD research:

The first was a collaboration with external academics, and reviewed the Beighton Score and looked at its appropriateness for the diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS).

“The Beighton Score as a measure of generalised joint hypermobility” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00296-021-04832-4

The second was an extension of Sabeeha's 2nd mini-project with her supervisor Dr Darius Köster. This review led to the identification of a potential diagnostic biomarker for EDS.

“The Role of Cell Adhesion and Cytoskeleton Dynamics in the Pathogenesis of the Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2021.649082/full

Both papers were really well received and gained a lot of attention on social media. They are now in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric!

Harper Adams MIBTP2020 student Camilla Preece helped to write a how to guide for the International Journal of Dairy Technology while on PIPS with the Society of Dairy Technology – it has now been published to Wiley:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/pb-assets/IDT%20-%20First%20Paper%20Guide%202.0-1616765345093.pdf

Birmingham MIBTP2 student Chris Harding, who graduated in 2018 has recently been named as first author on a paper as a result of his PhD research.

The paper can be viewed here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21528-2

Holly Shropshire, 2017 Warwick MIBTP students, is named 2nd author on a recent paper entitled: Phosphorus stress induces the synthesis of novel glycolipids in Pseudomonas aeruginosa that confer protection against a last-resort antibiotic. You can view the paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41396-021-01008-7 

Dr Harun Rashid is a graduate of the very first MIBTP cohort at Warwick, graduating with his PhD in 2016.

As well as publishing the following papers as a result of his PhD research, he was also recently selected and awarded the Prestigious Fulbright Visiting Scholarship 2021-2022 for Postdoctoral Study in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.

1. Rashid, M.H.A., Cheng, W. and Thomas, B. 2019. Temporal and Spatial Expression of Arabidopsis Gene Homologs Control Daylength Adaptation and Bulb Formation in Onion (Allium cepa L.). Scientific Reports, 9: 14629. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51262-1

2. Rashid, M.H.A. and Thomas, B. 2019. Diurnal Expression of Arabidopsis Gene Homologs during Daylength-Regulated Bulb Formation in Onion (Allium cepa L.). Scientia Horticulturae, 261: 108946. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2019.108946

MIBTP students Niamh Harrington and lyas Alav have published an open access protocol for testing susceptibility of Pseudomonas Staphylococcus biofilm to antibiotics in a model of Cystic Fibrosis with Dr Esther Sweeney, John Moat and Dr Freya Harrison in the JoVE journal. Read the paper.