An update from the Head of Department, Professor Gerard Evan, regarding the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Another week staring at the walls marks another week of successful SARS-CoV-2 containment. More and more time now seems to be spent staring alternately into a webcam or at a tiled tessellation of faces waiting expectantly to hear something whilst sipping a cup of coffee. Welcome to lockdown week 6.
For those getting extremely bored I recommend the board game Diplomacy. It has all the intrigue of a year in a Cambridge College and is a very good test of friendship. The setting is Europe and the near East at the start of the First World War and the rest, as they say, is history. For those with younger children, Cluedo is still one of the best. For anyone who would like a historical take on what a plague lockdown was like in the past, take a look at the University's "Life under Lockdown" feature article.
It's been quite an eventful couple of weeks in the Department. Thomas Foets and Marc de la Roche gave the first in our new online series of Friday Seminars – a technical tour de force that involved a massive amount of work from Latika Soogumbur and Rhys Grant, ably supported by Fiona Goodman, Dee Scadden, and Thomas and Mark. A few hair-raising moments as things were about to kick off when the YouTube presentation failed to load, but Rhys sorted it out and we were off. Attendance was excellent and I want to register my gratitude to all involved. This coming Friday will be the turn of the Carrington Group so please be sure to tune in at the appointed hour.
Latika is developing plans for content on the Departmental Reddit site and has rightly noted that not everyone wants to talk about science or University politics all the time. Please watch the Reddit space for some fun and light relief, as well as important information and discussion.
We continue to do our best to support the local and Milton Keynes-based national efforts towards SARS-CoV-2 screening. I particularly wish to thank the Taipale laboratory which has now lent almost all of its robotics and advanced PCR equipment to the joint University of Cambridge/AZ/GSK programme to set up a highly-automated screening facility for COVID-19 on the Biomedical Campus. The programme issued a plea for urgently-needed high-throughput instrumentation to build the lab from scratch with the initial aim of achieving 30,000 PCR tests per day by early May. The Taipale laboratory has lent two Multidrop Combi liquid dispensers from the Department's high-throughput robotics set up. The Taipale lab members are especially grateful to Nick Smith and Tom Mayle for their help with the practicalities of handing over the instruments, and I want to thank Minna, Jussi and their team for their generous help.
Kevin Beckett RIP
You will all know of the tragic death of our colleague Kevin Beckett last week from COVID-19 complications. Since then, many have shared your thoughts and memories of him and it is clear that his kindly, sunny and effortlessly helpful character had won him many friends across both of our buildings. Kevin was a stalwart member of our essential domestic staff, tidying us up, helping out in catering and generally looking after us.
Kevin hailed from Newcastle-upon-Tyne – his delightful Geordie accent was a dead giveaway – and got involved in catering at an early age after leaving school, when he worked making late-night food at a nightclub. On the happy advice of a friend that Cambridge was a great place to work, he moved down here and thrived. He began work in Pizza Hut, then held various catering and cooking positions, including in various College kitchens. Kevin then changed course and spent 15 years at Emmanuel College working as a technician with the College's conference and IT teams. However, food and catering remained his first love and in 2007 he took the position of kitchen porter at Robinson College. Robinson knew which side of their bread was buttered and decided to make the most of their investment by sponsoring Kevin to study for an advanced apprenticeship in professional cookery at Cambridge Regional College. Kevin joined the Department of Biochemistry in 2018 and brought with him his trademark jollity, dedication and kindness. Kevin is survived by his wife, Louise, and his son.
The troops behind our COVID-19 'strike force'
The various COVID projects running in the Department are going full tilt thanks to the selfless enthusiasm of several talented groups of researchers.
Luca Venditti is working in Biochemistry with Alex Borodavka on developing methods for displaying SARS-CoV-2 virion Spike epitopes on rotavirus A as a vaccine.
Working with Ben Luisi on resolving the structure of a peculiar RNA element in the SARS-COV-2 genome are Kasia Bandyra, Kotryna Bloznelyte and Tom Dendooven doing the experimental work, with Liviu Copoiu from Tom Blundell's group doing computational analysis to predict drug binding sites in the RNA and enzyme targets.
Omer Ziv, who is also studying the SARS-CoV-2 RNA, is using his own new technology to define virion RNA complementary interactions with host cell RNA. At the moment he is working on his own, but the groups in the Sanger Building are a highly collegiate, but safe and socially distanced, community and this mitigates any feeling of isolation.
You may recall that the COVID work in Florian Hollfelder's group falls into three strands – the interactive 'dialogue' between host lung epithelial cells and SARS-CoV-2 is being elucidated by Joachim de Jonghe, while the effort at mapping B cell anti- SARS-CoV-2 antibody specificities is the focus of Katrin Fischer. Their third goal, to use DARPINs as a facile tool for targeting SARS-CoV-2, is the bailiwick of Thomas Fryer, Wolfgang Koch and Joel Rogers.
Mairi Kilkenny is lending her gifted experimental hands to Luca Pellegrini as they attempt to dissect the nature and function of the interaction between the SARS-CoV-2 viral Nsp1 protein virulence factor and DNA primase.
Finally, Aleksei Lulla works with Marko Hyvönen on developing novel serological methodologies with which to detect SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Off site in the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre at Addenbrooke's, Kathryn Lilley is lucky to have Anja Andrejeva, a gifted member of the proteomics core facility, to keep essential experimental pipelines running, and Eneko Villanueva, Rayner Queiroz and Tom Smith (who is technically on paternity leave for another two weeks!) working on developing a general map of the interactions between SARS-CoV-2 RNAs and host cell proteins.
All these efforts have now been joined by various members of Tom Blundell's group (Pedro Torres, Arian Jamasb, Bridget Bannerman, Ali Asulami, Chris Beaudoin, Sherine Thomas, Sundeep Vedithi and Liviu Copoiu) who are using a wide variety of innovative and novel predictive in silico tools to assess potential novel therapeutic targets for COVID-19 treatment, targets both within the SARS-CoV-2 virion itself and within SARS-CoV-2-infected host cells.
Spotlight on our Maintenance Team
You are doubtless aware that our Biochemistry Department buildings have been classed as 'Category 1' because they support "research laboratories where research is being undertaken by staff and graduate students relating to COVID-19 or other areas in the immediate national interest." CAT-1 status means that all the buildings' resources must be maintained in full: power, heating, cooling, ventilation, water, elevators, and safety systems. Thank goodness, then, for our amazing, dedicated and tireless Maintenance Team led by the redoubtable and endlessly capable Roger Biamonti with his colleagues Tom Mayle, Tom Oldham and Alex Walter.
Despite their unfaltering commitment to support and protect us all, the Maintenance Team has to adhere to lockdown guidelines and protocols that limit the number of people on site at any one time. At a minimum, one member of maintenance staff comes in each Monday and Thursday.
The Maintenance Team are currently carrying out full flushing and temperature checks, dealing with the odd leak (last week), refilling the cryogens, and fixing various essential pieces of equipment like ice machines. Generally, they keep their expert eyes on both buildings and their contents, and carry out repairs usually before anyone even notices something is broken. Category 1 status means that all regular servicing and maintenance continues as normal. They have supervised servicing by Adcocks of the chillers in Hopkins and will do the same for the chillers in the Sanger Building this week. In addition, all of the Sanger water tanks have been cleaned, and checked for Legionella contamination. I, for one, sleep well at night knowing the Department is in the care of such capable, knowledgeable and diligent hands – all of them volunteers. We owe them an enormous and continuing debt of gratitude.
Professor Kevin Brindle FRS
Finally, I am absolutely delighted to tell you that Professor Kevin Brindle has just been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
The Royal Society is the world's oldest independent scientific academy dedicated to promoting scientific excellence. It was born on 28th November 1660 following a lecture at Gresham College by Sir Christopher Wren who designed, amongst other major works, St Paul's Cathedral. Joined by other leading polymaths including Robert Boyle and John Wilkins, the group soon received royal approval from Charles II, and from 1663 became known as 'The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge'. The Society's motto is nullius in verba, which can be paraphrased as "Don't take anybody's word for it!" and reflects the Society's strong history of independence and its support for experiment and observation as the principal tool for discovering the universe.
Each year up to 52 Fellows working in the UK, Ireland or in any Commonwealth country and irrespective of the candidate's nationality, as well as 10 Foreign Members, are elected by the existing Fellowship from a group of some 700 candidates proposed.
Kevin Brindle joins an illustrious list of scientific icons that includes Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Francis Crick, as well as the likes of our own Jean Thomas, Peter Leadlay and Tom Blundell. Fellowship of the Royal Society is a signal honour and recognises Kevin's truly ground-breaking work in developing new modalities for non-invasive imaging; technologies that have revolutionised cancer diagnosis, treatment and patient care.
Please do all keep safe and secure. The lockdown will end. And when it does, it will need every one of us to get the ship upright and afloat again.
Gerard