Gibson Group: Alex Murray

Biography

Alex was born in London. In 2013 he studied Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bristol. In 2017 he undertook a Masters of research in Clinical sciences at the university of Liverpool where he developed a method to permeabilize drosophila melanogaster larvae to cryoprotectants.

Research Interests

Cryopreservation, Synthetic antifreeze polymers, Cryoprotectant toxicity neutralisation and reduction.

Skills

Cell culture, DNA extraction, PCR, primer design, RNAi, ImageJ, light microscopy, florescent microscopy, confocal microscopy, drosophila techniques (handling, permeabilization, embryo mounting and imaging) electrophoresis, immunohistochemistry, ELISPOT, ELISA, immune cell stimulation, flow cytometry and FACS, slow freezing and vitrification.

PhD Project Overview

Alex is working under Professor Matthew Gibson and in conjunction with GE healthcare. He is studying cryopreservation techniques including the use of synthetic antifreeze protein mimics and controlled freezing gradients.

Publications

[1] Lindsey A. Edwards, Anna K. Nowocin, Nazila V. Jafari, Lucy L. Meader, Kathryn Brown, Aurélien Sarde, Carolyn Lam, Alex Murray, and Wilson Wong. (2017). Chronic Rejection of Cardiac Allografts Is Associated with Increased Lymphatic Flow and Cellular Trafficking. Circulation. 2017;137:488–503. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.117.028533

[2] Alex Murray, Daniel Palmer, Daimark Bennett, Venkata Dwarampudi & João Pedro de Magalhães. (2020). A method for the permeabilization of live Drosophila melanogaster larvae to small molecules and cryoprotectants. Fly. https://doi.org/10.1080/19336934.2020.1724051

[3] Avelar RA, Ortega JG, Tacutu R, Tyler EJ, Bennett D, Binetti P, Budovsky A, Chatsirisupachai K, Johnson E, Murray A, Shields S, Tejada-Martinez D, Thornton D, Fraifeld VE, Bishop CL, de Magalhães JP. A multidimensional systems biology analysis of cellular senescence in aging and disease. Genome Biol. 2020 Apr 7;21(1):91. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-020-01990-9

[4] Bojic, S., Murray, A., Bentley, B.L. et al. Winter is coming: the future of cryopreservation. BMC Biol 19, 56 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-021-00976-8

[5] Murray, A., Congdon, R., Tomás, R.M.F., Kilbride, P., Gibson, M.I., Biomacromolecules, 2021., Red Blood Cell Cryopreservation with Minimal Post-Thaw Lysis Enabled by a Synergistic Combination of a Cryoprotecting Polyampholyte with DMSO/Trehalose, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.biomac.1c00599

Education

University of Liverpool

Masters: Research in Clinical Sciences

Contact:

alexander.murray@warwick.ac.uk