News and Events
ESMB help 'Run the Network' to raise money for ARUK
During Dementia Action Week (17th-23rd May) the ESMB group joined dementia researchers from across Scotland in a fundraising challenge to raise money for Alzheimer's Research UK. The initial aim was to collectively run/walk/cycle(/use any other form of exercise) over the week to accumulate just over 500 miles (813 km) - the distance between all the Universities in the The ARUK Scotland Network but we had already made 500 miles by Wednesday so we just walked 500 more! In total everyone taking part covered 1193 miles and the ESMB contributed just over 350 miles to this total by running, walking, cycling, swimming and even Zumba. The challenge raised over £3,500 for ARUK, far exceeding the initial £1,000 target. Highlight o  f the week has to be our group walk through The Hermitage of Braid in our orange ARUK T-shirts. We collectively walked a marathon to contribute to the overall total and everyone had a good time even though we were blessed with some lovely Scottish weather. |
Alex speaks to the Parkinson's UK Edinburgh Research Interest Group
On Saturday Alex presented his work to the Parkinson's UK Edinburgh Research Interest Group at an online engagement event. Alex gave an excellent talk and effectively used analogies to communicate complex scientific concepts to an audience comprised of individuals living with Parkinson’s and their carers. Following his talk Alex was jointly awarded the Ken Bowler Travel Bursary along with the two other speakers – congratulations Alex. You can read more about the Parkinson's UK Edinburgh Research Interest Group here and you can watch Alex's talk here. |
Congratulations to Aimee & Toria
Last week was a big milestone for our 5th year M.Chem. students, Aimee and Toria, as they submitted their dissertations. Aimee has been investigating liquid-liquid phase separation of UBQLN2 in collaboration with Luke McAlary at the University of Wollongong, Australia and Toria’s project focussed on super-resolution imaging of cytosolic TDP-43 aggregates. Huge well done to both! |
Welcome to Rebecca and Ji-Eun
The Edinburgh single-molecule biophysics group is excited to welcome post-doctoral research associates Rebecca and Ji-Eun who will be working on projects in collaboration with UCB Pharmaceuticals. Rebecca's research aims to elucidate the structure and pathogenic nature of α-synuclein aggregates, which are associated with Parkinson's disease, and Ji-Eun's work will focus on characterising tau aggregates, which are associated with Alzheimer's disease. Read more about their background and projects in the People section. |
Congratulations to Zoe
Well done to Zoe, who has passed her first year viva! Zoe's work on LIVE-PAINT impressed the panel, and we are all excited about her future work! |
New super-resolution method for imaging in live cells
We have published a new approach to super-resolution imaging in live cells. Entitled "LIVE-PAINT", the method was developed in collaboration with Lynne Regan's lab in the School of Biology. LIVE-PAINT takes advantage of peptide-protein interactions; the protein-of-interest is tagged with a short peptide sequence, which has a binding partner fused to a fluorescence protein. As the fluorescent protein and peptide transiently bind, a fluorescent burst results, and this is accurately pinpointed with nanometre accuracy. Repeated binding events allow a super-resolution image to be built from this. Well done to Curran, Zoe, Louise, Owen and Simon!  |
New paper in Nature Cell Death and Differentiation
A recent paper has been published in Cell Death and Differentiation on a mechanism of cell death caused by alpha-synuclein oligomers in Parkinson's disease. In a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh, UCL, The Crick Institute, the University of Aberdeen, the University of New York, and the University of Cambridge, the paper describes how oligomers lead to lipid peroxidation, which causes cell death via ferroptosis.  |
Sarah's submission of her 5th year report
Huge congratulations to Sarah Aitken who submitted the dissertation on her work done throughout her final year at Edinburgh. Working with Mike Daniels in Barry McColl's lab, Sarah used single-molecule methods to characterise the aggregation of amyloid beta, and also looked at the response of immune cells to the toxic oligomers formed. |
Mathew presents his research to EASTBIO group
On the 1st May, Mathew presented the groups research to the EASTBIO World Class Underpinning Bioscience group. Due to the isolation rules relating to the COVID-19 Pandemic, this was done via teleconferencing, and so a recording of the presentation was also made. This is accessible on this website. |
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