University of Wolverhampton Biosciences

An important discovery and well deserved Nobel

Nobel Prize goes to microRNA researchers US scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun helped explain how genes work inside the human body.

A well deserved accolade

Nobel Prize goes to Svante Paabo for Neanderthal work Sweden's Svante Paabo wins the prize for discoveries on humanity's extinct relatives.

This is fascinating work, with a potential to develop new anti cancer therapies.
One interesting thing (I found out from twitter) is that one of the authors is the first in their family to go to University and switched degrees from art to biosciences. Now they’re doing a PhD and producing work like this. Brilliant!

Bub1 kinase acts as a signalling hub for the entire Cryptococcus neoformans spindle assembly checkpoint pathway Cryptococcus neoformans (Cn) is an important human pathogen and a model system for basidiomycetes. Here we carry out a dissection of its spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC), focusing on Bub1 and Bub3. In many eukaryotes, including humans, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Bub1 un...

This is fascinating. If it can be translated into diagnosis and treatment, it would be fantastic

Substitution mutational signatures in whole-genome–sequenced cancers in the UK population A large whole-genome sequenced cancer effort advances the understanding of common and rare mutational signatures and their analysis.

Someone needs to write that catalyst of lab safety procedures 😉

🦔👩🏼‍🔬🧪🧫🧬 (She/Her) on Twitter “😆”

Interesting talk coming up next week
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/conservation-and-biology-of-restrepia-a-floral-gem-of-the-andes-tickets-302847343557

Another interesting development in Vaccines to combat the pandemic. "Botanical biopharming" has been used before, most notably in the production of monoclonals to treat infection with Ebola in 2014-16, so it's technology with a proven track record. Now, it's been used to develop the first plant based vaccine against Covid.

Canada authorizes first plant-based COVID-19 vaccine Canada has become the first country to authorize use of a plant-based COVID-19 vaccine. Canadian regulators said Thursday Medicago’s two-dose vaccine can be given to adults ages 18 to 64, but said there's too little data on the shots in people 65 and older.

This is interesting news. Crizanlizumab is a monoclonal antibody that binds to a protein (P-selectin, a type of cell adhesion molecule) on red blood cells. Crizanlizumab is used to reduce frequency of sickle cell crises in people with sickle cell anemia.

New sickle cell treatment given to first patients in England Crizanlizumab is thought to cut visits to A&E by 40% for patients with the blood disorder.

This is brilliant

Ben on Twitter “This is the best explanation I’ve seen for how mRNA vaccines work! https://t.co/fpkUhbhN1T”

Wow! How fantastic is this?

An obligately photosynthetic bacterial anaerobe from a deep-sea hydrothermal vent The abundance of life on Earth is almost entirely due to biological photosynthesis, which depends on light energy. The source of light in natural habitats has heretofore been thought to be the sun, thus restricting photosynthesis to solar photic environments on the surface of the Earth. If photosynt...

Interesting article about the state of play with the different vaccines available and how they may cope with the troublesome mutants. Sounds a bit X Men, but is actually cool science! 😉

Vaccines Versus the Mutants Facing new variants of SARS-CoV-2, some vaccines may offer more robust protection or be more easily redesigned to target them.