Research by Dr Chris Corre and colleagues could lead to improved manufacturing of existing antibiotics, and open up opportunities to discover new ones.

Press Release (3 Feb 2021)

Professor Jose Gutierrez-Marcos and an international team of researchers have uncovered the mechanism that allows plants to pass on their ‘memories’ to offspring, which results in growth and developmental defects.

Press Release (1 December 2020)

A computational model of a human lung cell has been used to understand how SARS-CoV-2 draws on human host cell metabolism to reproduce by Dr Hadrien Delattre and Professor Orkun Soyer. This study helps understand how the virus uses the host to survive, and enable drug predictions for treating the virus to be made.
Press Release (25 November 2020)

A hallmark of Parkinson's disease is the degeneration of a group of neurons in the brain that release the neurotransmitter dopamine (dopaminergic neurons). By introducing low concentrations of structurally-defined aggregates of alpha synuclein, a key toxic species in Parkinson’s disease, into single dopaminergic neurons, Emily Hill and Dr Mark Wall have shown these protein aggregates open a specific channel in the cell membrane, reducing neuronal excitability.

Press Release (24 November 2020)

Fish odour syndrome (trimethylaminuria) is a debilitating disease, in which the liver cannot break down the smelly chemical trimethylamine which is produced by enzymes from bacteria residing in the gut leaving people with a fish like odour. Dr Mussa Quareshy and colleagues are paving the way to prevent the syndrome after a breakthrough in studying the enzyme in the gut which produces trimethylamine.

Press Release (23 November 2020)

For young people with cystic fibrosis, lung infection with Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA, is common and is treated with antibiotics in the hope that this will prevent a decline in lung function. However there has recently been debate over the role S. aureus plays in CF lung disease. Dr Esther Sweeney, Dr Freya Harrison and colleagues have used a new model of CF lungs which could be used to make better decisions about future use of antibiotics.

Press Release (19 November 2020)

Press Release (11 November 2020)

The relationship between the Cx26 gene and ability to regulate Carbon dioxide is to be explored by Professor Nick Dale thanks to a £686,956 grant, from the BBSRC.

Press Release (13 August 2020)

An innovative way to increase plant yield naturally, reducing the need for expensive fertilisers is being explored by Dr Miriam Gifford, Dr Isabelle Carré and colleagues, thanks to a £492,343 grant from the BBSRC.

Press Release (12 August 2020)

Professor Robin Allaby and colleagues have achieved a number of innovative breakthroughs in analysing sedimentary ancient DNA to reconstruct an 8,150 year old environmental catastrophe in an area that is now covered by the North Sea.

Press Release(16 July 2020)

Two academics from Life Sciences have been awarded a UKRI Future Leader Fellowship.

• Dr Byron Carpenter for his project titled: Developing a synthetic signalling system capable of the precise spatial and temporal control of protein function in living cells.
• Dr Erin Connelly for her project: Datamining medieval medical texts for modern medicines.

The fellowship scheme is awarded to the best researchers in the UK, keeping research and innovation in the UK world class.

Press Release

A £1m grant from the Wellcome Trust has enabled researchers to work with East African countries in their emergency preparations for COVID-19 as the pandemic spreads across Africa. Press Release

Professor James Nokes comments:
'We hope that by closely combining our efforts with in-country expertise in modelling, epidemiology, health economics and systems and vulnerability mapping we can develop models appropriate to each setting with results that will immediately feed into the policy making process to have the greatest impact.'

The microbes found in aquatic environments and their interactions will be investigated by Warwick researcher Professor Orkun Soyer, thanks to an investigator award from The Gordon and Betty Moore foundation.

Press release

The Knowledge Centre look at research by Professor Eric Holub into new haricot bean varieties which are suitable for growing in the UK climate.
Read the article

If you think about a traditional Christmas dinner, there’s turkey with pigs in blankets, or maybe you prefer a nut roast. But the rest is vegetables. A large proportion of our plate should be covered in vegetables, and the standard winter varieties, like carrots and sprouts, are grown very successfully in the UK.

But will this always be the case? Climate change is bringing with it new challenges as well as making known pests and diseases more difficult to tackle. Scientists at Warwick's Crop Centre, are working to understand the pests and diseases of the some of the UK’s major crops and developing, using traditional plant breeding and genetic expertise, new resistant varieties.

Knowledge Centre article

Antibiotics are going to stop working. Bacteria are developing resistance to the drugs we have to treat them and there is no doubt that without action getting an infection or having surgery is going to get a lot more risky. With a global health crisis on our hands, scientists across the world are now trying to find alternatives to the drugs which have kept us alive for the past decade.

One possible solution is the use of bacteriophages.

Dr Antonia Sagona is working on understanding how phages fight infections.

Read Knowledge Centre article

Dr Hendrik Schafer and colleagues are looking at the microbial cycling of trace gases in sea ice as part of an international research programme called MOSAiC.
Read Knowledge Centre article

Applications are invited for an Associate Professor or Professor of Infection Microbiology to join our vibrant research and teaching community in the School of Life Sciences.

We particularly encourage applications from candidates who complement existing strengths in the School and who will lead research in the areas of laboratory based antimicrobial resistance and anti-infective discovery, the human microbiome, host-pathogen interactions and immunology, microbial genetics and chemical biology approaches to address human and animal infection.

Job description

Bacterial cell biology researchers from across the world gathered at The Pasteur institute in Paris at the end of September to attend the 6^th biennial Great Wall symposium organised by Professor David Roper and Professor Ivo Boneca (Pasteur). This three day meeting on all aspects of bacterial cell wall biosynthesis was attended by just under 200 interdisciplinary researchers on all aspects of bacterial cell wall microbiology.

Dr Adrian Lloyd from SLS provided an invited talk on his recently submitted research on 'Substrate and stereochemical control of cell wall crosslinking by E. coli PBP1B' as well as a posters from a number of Warwick PhD students from SLS and WMS.

Funded by the Wellcome Trust and Warwick Quantitative Biomedicine Programme (WQBP), LabCut is a science film workshop run by SynBio CDT PhD students Cansu Kuey, Charlotte Gruender and Patrick Capel. The five films created during the inaugural workshop are now available to be viewed and will be screened during the British Science Festival in September. Find out more