Life Sciences News

Following the announcement of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) that a, currently under development, Ebola vaccine may not be ready for the current outbreak, Professor David Evans of the University of Warwick's Department of Life Sciences argues that it is "still possible that a successful GSK Ebola vaccine might help in this outbreak" due to the World Health Organisation (WHO) prediction that - by Christmas - new cases could number 10,000 per week.

The School of Life Sciences will lead one of four projects, with combined funding of £5 million, supported by a BBSRC led initiative known as SARISA (Soils and Rhizosphere Interactions for Sustainable Agri-ecosystems). SARISA was developed with NERC under the Global Food Security (GFS) programme. Researchers will investigate the factors affecting soil microbial communities and the consequences for crop growth.

Soil is fundamental to our life support system, providing food, storing and filtering water, cycling nutrients and providing a habitat for many species. It is at the heart of our interaction with the environment and central to the responsible management of our planet. The world will need to produce 50% more food by 2030 to feed a growing world population and soil science is crucial to meeting this challenge.

Dr Gary Bending’s team will use advanced genetic sequencing methods to derive new understanding of the factors which shape the composition of the rhizosphere microbial community (i.e. its ‘microbiome’), and its consequences for crop growth. Using field crops of oilseed rape as a model system the researchers will determine the roles of soil biodiversity, local climate, soil properties, rotation and geographical distance in shaping the rhizosphere microbiome. Oilseed rape suffers 6-25 % annual losses, termed yield decline, because of the development of a detrimental rhizosphere microbiome, for which there is no treatment. The project will identify shifts in microbial composition and both microbial and plant gene expression associated with a change from a healthy to a diseased rhizosphere. They will use this data to investigate the potential to manipulate recruitment of detrimental and beneficial soil biota into the rhizosphere microbiome in order to promote crop growth and yield. Dr Graham Teakle is a Co-Investigator on the project.

Prof Elizabeth Wellington is the Warwick principal investigator in a second SARISA funded project led by Dr John Hammond at the University of Reading. This study will use a variety of approaches to better understand the role plants and microbes living in the rhizosphere play in making phosphorus available for plant growth and how these roles change during plant development under field and laboratory conditions. Other Life Sciences contributors to the project are Dr Gary Bending, Prof Dave Scanlan and Dr Alex Jones.

Minister for Universities, Science and Cities Greg Clark said

'Forging these strong partnerships between research councils and the three innovative new initiatives announced today are vital in addressing major challenges facing our society like feeding a growing population. By working together, the research councils can bring a range of perspectives to bear on these issues, ensuring that that excellent UK research is translated into tangible economic and societal benefits.'

Professor Melanie Welham, BBSRC Executive Director of Science, said:

'Soil research is an area of strategic importance for BBSRC, NERC and all the Global Food Security programme partners, particularly in relation to the 'sustainable enhancement' of agriculture. These initiatives are great examples of UK public funders working in partnership through GFS to support excellent interdisciplinary research in this area.'

'Good management of land and soils is vital to maintain soil health, nutrient cycling and biodiversity - essential to help provide enough food for a growing global population while protecting ecosystems in the wider environment and the other benefits they provide.'

A trust set up by Elizabeth Creak, a leading Warwickshire farmer who was the first woman to be High Sheriff of Warwickshire, has announced that it has agreed to fund a Chair in Food Security at the University of Warwick’s School of Life Sciences. The announcement has just been made by The Elizabeth Creak Charitable Trust.

In a TV interview with Good Morning Britain earlier this week, virologist Prof Andrew Easton comments on Ebola, saying the risk of it entering the UK is small.

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