The University of Warwick has welcomed £13m of government funding to support bioresearch projects. It will fund about 260 researchers to look at global problems connected with agriculture and horticulture.

Dr Liz Fullam has recently been awarded a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship of £822,993, jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society, to investigate the role of nutrient transporters in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of TB. The five-year Fellowship, with the possibility of an additional three year extension, will provide an excellent opportunity to establish this area of research in the School of Life Sciences, and builds on Liz’s current research project, which was funded by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship.

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings published today, Thursday 2^nd October 2014, reveal that the University of Warwick has leapt up 38 places in that table to now be ranked 103rd in the world.

We're delighted to report that Warwick has been named the Times' and Sunday Times' University of the Year 2014/15. We've also risen two places to eighth in the UK in the Good University Guide 2015 league table, which will be published this Sunday. These are outstanding achievements of which all our staff and students can be proud.

Prof Jim Beynon is Chair of the UK Plant Sciences Federation Executive Committee. Find out about the current status and future challenges of UK plant science by watching his presentation from the UK PlantSci 2014 meeting held earlier this year in York.

UK Plant Science: Current Status & Future Challenges
(JXB YouTube)

Warwick is hosting a series of six engaging and accessible lectures, open to all, over the festive period from 3-10 December 2014. Join our academics for fantastic new ideas, explosions and experiments.

Dr Miriam Gifford, representing the School of Life Sciences, will present a lecture entitled 'Talk Amongst Your Cells' on Monday 8 December. Animals and plants are made up of many different cells that have to work together to enable living things to grow… So cells have to talk to each other, even the cells in slime mould! Come with us to play ping pong and Chinese whispers to give you a cell’s eye view of trying to make yourselves heard! Book your tickets

Professor David Evans comments upon the results, published by Nature, of the tests of new drug ZMapp for the treatment of Ebola.

Researchers led by Dr Sonia Correa have provided the first evidence that the lack of a naturally occurring protein is linked to early signs of dementia.

Published in Nature Communications, the research found that the absence of the protein MK2/3 promotes structural and physiological changes to cells in the nervous system. These changes were shown to have a significant correlation with early signs of dementia, including restricted learning and memory formation capabilities.

Life Sciences academics, Prof Andrew Easton and Dr Keith Leppard, comment on the use of experimental drug therapies to treat the Ebola virus.

A BBSRC-funded team led by Prof Orkun Soyer is investigating how to use methane-producing microbes, known as methanogens, to generate renewable biofuels.

On Tuesday 15th July the School of Life Sciences held a departmental reception for graduating students. Our Acting Head of School, Laura Green, congratulated our students on their achievements and presented a number of awards.

In a study published in Nature this week, Professor Matt Keeling and fellow researchers have produced the first national model to investigate the bovine TB spread.

The results derived from the model in the Nature paper, entitled “A dynamic model of bovine tuberculosis spread and control in Great Britain”, demonstrated that the majority of herd outbreaks are caused by multiple transmissions routes - including failed cattle infection tests, cattle movement and reinfection from environmental reservoirs (infected pastures and wildlife). The study suggests that improved testing, vaccination of cattle and culling all cattle on infected farms would be the most effective strategies for controlling the disease.

A study led by Professor David Evans has discovered how a bloodsucking parasite has transformed Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) into one of the biggest threats facing UK honeybees.

The paper "A Virulent Strain of Deformed Wing Virus (DWV) of Honeybees (Apis mellifera) Prevails after Varroa destructor-Mediated, or In Vitro, Transmission" is published in PLoS Pathogens.

The project is part of the Insect Pollinators Initiative, jointly funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Defra, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Scottish Government and the Wellcome Trust under the auspices of the Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) partnership.

Professor Charles Sheppard has been awarded an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List 2014 for services to environmental conservation in the British Indian Ocean Territory.

The well-deserved award recognizes nearly 40 years of research in the Chagos Archipelago. During this time, Charles has facilitated studies by over 100 scientists and generated a large volume of publications. This scientific input led to the creation of the world's largest marine reserve, totaling more than 640,000 square kilometres (397,678 square miles), an area more than twice the size of the UK. The Chagos Archipelago has been designated as a fully no-take marine reserve and is of huge value to the Indian Ocean and its people.

In addition to working in the School of Life Sciences, Charles is Chairman of the Chagos Conservation Trust, and works for a range of UN, Governmental and aid agencies in tropical marine and coastal development issues. He advises several governments on marine and coastal management and science, including the UK Government on its tropical Overseas Territories. For 10 years he was also science adviser to the Commissioner in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for the archipelago.

Relevant links:
Charles Sheppard
Chagos Marine reserve 

The UK's Guardian Newspaper has today, Tuesday 3^rd June 2014, once again ranked the University of Warwick in the country’s top 10 universities, ranking it at 9th overall in the UK (up one place from last year’s Guardian table), and also once again ranking Warwick as the top University in the West Midlands.

Warwick Crop Centre at the University of Warwick has won a five year contract from Defra to continue to host the UK Vegetable Genebank at the University’s Wellesbourne campus.

The Genebank is an internationally significant collection of almost 14,000 seed samples from different vegetable crops including carrot onion, lettuce cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli and closely related wild species.

The collection represents the genetic diversity in the genepool of each crop, and is a vital resource for researchers and plant breeders across the world.

'Vegetables are an important component of a healthy diet and the seed resources within the Genebank will support the development of new and improved varieties in the future', said Dr Charlotte Allender who leads the Vegetable Genebank project.

BBC's David Gregory visited the Warwick Crop Centre to film activities in the GRU (Genetic Resources Unit). The film is now available on You Tube at http://youtu.be/b9AmQ8wZvKg

Useful links:
Warwick Crop Centre
Genetic Resources Unit

Research by Dr Robin Allaby and collaborators is highlighted in a special feature in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), published 29 April 2014.

The papers are part of a collection entitled ‘The Modern View of Domestication’ edited by Greger Larson and Dolores R. Piperno, and result from a catalysis meeting entitled ‘Domestication as an Evolutionary Phenomenon: Expanding the Synthesis’, held 7-11 April, 2011, hosted by the National Evolutionary Synthesis Centre, USA.

Articles:

Larson G, Piperno D, Allaby RG et al. (2014) Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies.
This introductory paper presents the state of the art in the field of domestication studies by discussing what is known about the spatial and temporal patterns of domestication, and controversies surrounding the speed, intentionality, and evolutionary aspects of the domestication process. Three key challenges for future research are highlighted.

Fuller DQ, Denham T, Arroyo-Kalin M, Lucas L, Stephens C, Qin L, Allaby RG, Purugganan MD (2014) Convergent evolution and parallelism in plant domestication revealed by an expanding archaeological record.
Archaeological plant remains provide a range of insights into the processes by which plants were domesticated in different parts of the world.This paper provides evidence that the domestication of wild plant species has been a process of convergence from different regional, environmental, and economic starting points.

Gerbault P, Allaby RG, Boivin N et al. (2014) Storytelling and story testing in domestication.
This paper outlines some of the modelling approaches most relevant to current problems in domestication research, and demonstrates the ways in which simulation modelling is beginning to reshape our understanding of the domestication process.

Links:
Dr Robin Allaby
PNAS April, 2014 vol 111, no.17 

To celebrate Earth Day, the Warwick Food GRP have announced the winners of their very first calendar competition.

Postgraduate Tim Kaufmann from Life Sciences was one of the 10 winners who will receive a copy of the Food GRP Calendar, featuring his own picture.

Food GRP Calendar competition winners

The School of Life Sciences is currently hosting the final rounds of the British Biology Olympiad (BBO). Run by the Society of Biology, the BBO challenges and stimulates students with an interest in Biology to expand and extend their talents. Students are able to demonstrate their knowledge in practical and theory tests and be rewarded by prizes.

From April 13^th to April 16^th 2014 practical assessments and an additional written paper are being taken in the Life Sciences Teaching labs, utilising our excellent facilities and teaching staff.

Medals and prizes will be presented at the Royal Society in June and top students will be selected to represent the UK in the International Biology Olympiad in Bali in July.

Relevant link:
British Biology Olympiad

Bethanie Francis, an undergraduate student in Life Sciences, was part of the winning team in RWE npower's Energy Challenge.

The Energy Challenge, which has been running since 2006, is a nationwide competition which tasks students to offer a solution to an energy-sector challenge. This year, the challenge asked: “How do we put the energy back into energy companies?”

Warwick team ‘myPower’ made up of Master Physics student James Waterman, Master Systems Engineering Student Jamie Day, Life Sciences undergraduate Bethanie Francis and Master Physics student James Iley-Hazelgrove won the Energy Challenge which sees the team win £500 each and all have received offers of summer internships with npower.

The competition is designed to develop students’ commercial awareness and presentation skills, which many employers seek. The final was marked on the idea’s originality, affordability and value for money. Consideration was also given for its public engagement and positive perception potential.