Lewandowski group in collaboration with Ladizhansky and Brown (U. of Guelph) groups have characterised site-specific molecular motions of a 7-helix membrane protein within a lipid bilayer using solid-state NMR measurements. Read the article in JACS. 

The Gibson Group, in collaboration with the Medical School, have demonstrated a new way to cryopreserve donor blood using a synthetic polymer which mimics Antifreeze Proteins found in Arctic Cod.

Read the paper here

Warwick Chemistry has played a lead role in securing funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for 2 new Centres for Doctoral training, in Molecular Analytical Science and Diamond Science and Technology, as part of the recently announced UK's largest investment in postgraduate training in engineering and physical sciences. The Universities and Science Minister, David Willetts, announced the funding of over seventy new Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs), spread across 24 UK universities on 22nd November.

For further information please visit:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/university_of_warwick_takes_share_of_163350m_to_train_tomorrow146s_engineers_and_scientists1

http://onlinepressoffice.tnrcommunications.co.uk/universities-funding/video 

Research, led by the Corre group, has exploited their insight into bacterial regulatory mechanisms that control natural product biosynthesis to inactivate a key transcriptional repressor gene. Consequently, a normally silent pathway was constitutively expressed in the mutant strain and novel natural products were produced, isolated and structurally characterised. This work, published as an open access edge article in Chemical Science, represents a powerful strategy for the discovery of new natural products by rational manipulation of pathway-specific regulatory elements.

Scientists have discovered that a drug which increases the risk of sudden cardiac death interacts with mistranslated protein-coding genes present in heart muscle.

Scott group researchers report in Chemical Science (Open Access) that some of their helical metal flexicate complexes have high activity and selectivity against a range of cancer cell lines including cisplatin-resistant strains. The mechanism involves arresting cells in the G2/mitosis phase, and DNA binding is not necessarily involved.

The Royal Society has announced the appointment of 22 new Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holders including Professor Greg Challis of the Department of Chemistry.

The Gibson Group has been highlighted in a recent edition of Chemistry World - The Royal Society of Chemistry's Monthly Magazine. As part of a special article on how life survives in extreme enviroments, Dr Gibson was interviewed to discuss his team's work on polymeric mimics of antifreeze (glyco)proteins. These proteins enable fish to survive in polar oceans and synthetic mimics hold great promise in biotechnology.

Read the article here

Go to the Gibson Group's Webpages here

Follow us on twitter @LabGibson

The Gibson group have undertaken a detailed study into the ability of synthetic polymers to inhibit the growth of ice crystals - this is a fundmental process of incredible importance in biology (survival of extremophiles), medicine (cryoprotectection of cells/organs) and industry (preventing ice-induced damage). The Gibson group are pioneering the use of polymers as alternative to antifreeze proteins - Nature's cryoprotectants, using a combination of chemical, analytical, biological and computational methods

Read their latest paper here, in collaboration with R. Notman (CSC): http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bm400217j

The Gibson Group publishes in Biomaterials Science on why certain (macro)molecules are capable of inhibiting ice crystal growth, inspired by antifeeze proteins.

The work, conducted in collaboration with Warwick Medical School provides insights into which structural features are essential for a (macro)molecule to inhibit ice crystal growth and why apparently similar compounds have opposing activity.

The ability to control ice crystal growth is a major technological challenge (anyone stuck at Heathrow or scraping their car...?) with many biotechnological applications.

Read the paper here

Daniel Phillips, a 2nd year PhD student in the Gibson Group, won the prize for best poster at the RSC Postgraduate Nanoscience Symposium held at the University of Birmingham.

Read some of Dan's publications in Chem Commun and Biomacromolecules