News

16 Apr 2018

Bacteria in oceans produce millions of tonnes of hydrocarbons

The Howe Group have estimated the amount of hydrocarbons produced by marine microbes.Chris Howe's group, with an international team of researchers, have estimated the amount of hydrocarbons (the primary ingredient in crude oil) that are produced by a massive population of photosynthetic marine microbes, called cyanobacteria. These organisms in turn…

16 Apr 2018

Paul Dupree: Highly Cited Researcher

The Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers 2015 list was published this week.There are about 3,000 researchers worldwide across many science disciplines who are categorised as having a high number of highly cited (top 1%) articles between 2003 and 2013. Paul Dupree is amongst about 20 Cambridge scientists named.

16 Apr 2018

Ancient pathway to proteolysis

The Robinson Group have published a new paper in Nature Communications.Nick Robinson and colleagues have published a paper in Nature Communications entitled "Involvement of a eukaryotic-like ubiquitin-related modifier in the proteasome pathway of the archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius". Small archaeal ubiquitin-like modifiers (SAMPs) have been hypo…

13 Apr 2018

Grant successes

Congratulations to members of the Department who have recently won major competitive grants.Richard Farndale has won an £800K award from the British Heart Foundation to fund a 4-year collaboration with Materials Science and Regenerative Medicine.Steve Jackson (Gurdon Institute) has won a £3.9M competitive renewal of his Cancer Research UK programme…

13 Apr 2018

Postgraduate Symposium winners 2015

The Department of Biochemistry 3rd Year Postgraduate Symposium was held on Tuesday 30th June.Final year graduate students presented a summary of their work. Each talk was judged on scientific content and presentation. The judges were impressed with the consistent quality of the presentations, reflecting the wide range of projects available within t…

13 Apr 2018

Luca Pellegrini elected member of EMBO

Luca Pellegrini has been elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization.EMBO Members and Associate Members number some 1,700 of the best researchers in Europe and around the world, and election to EMBO Membership is recognition of research excellence and the outstanding achievements made by a life scientist.

13 Apr 2018

Thought Leader Award for Jules Griffin

Agilent Technologies Inc. is awarding Jules Griffin an Agilent Thought Leader Award in recognition of his work in lipidomics.This award includes an Agilent 6560 Ion Mobility Q-TOF LC/MS system, which Jules and his team will use to advance their lipid profiling of human tissues. The study of lipids and their functions is essential to understanding a…

13 Apr 2018

Breakthrough in understanding plant cell walls

The Dupree Group have published a new paper in the journal Biochemistry.Paul Dupree's group and their colleagues have published a paper entitled "Probing the Molecular Architecture of Arabidopsis thaliana Secondary Cell Walls Using Two- and Three-Dimensional 13C Solid State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy", which is the Biochemistry journal…

13 Apr 2018

Phylomemetics of music

Professor Chris Howe applies evolution mapping techniques to music.Modern scientific methods for mapping the evolution of species are being applied to centuries-old hand-copied music, providing new inspiration for how it is performed. Read more about this exciting work by Chris Howe and his collaborators on the University website.

13 Apr 2018

Electrical current from plant power

A prototype 'green bus shelter' could eventually generate enough electricity to light itself.A prototype 'green bus shelter' that could eventually generate enough electricity to light itself has been built by a collaboration of University of Cambridge researchers and eco-companies. It is the brainchild of Chris Howe and Paolo Bombelli. Read the ful…

13 Apr 2018

Professor Richard Perham

It is with great sadness we report that Richard Perham, Emeritus Professor of Structural Biology and former Head of our Department (1985-1996) passed away on Saturday 14th February.In the late 1960s, Richard uncovered the critical importance of charge-charge interaction between protein subunits during TMV self-assembly and, in his subsequent long a…

13 Apr 2018

Partnership with India to fight multi-drug resistant tuberculosis

Tom Blundell is amongst those participating in the Cambridge-Chennai Centre Partnership on Antimicrobial Resistant Tuberculosis.Read the full story on the University website.

13 Apr 2018

Computer model of blood development could speed up search for new leukaemia drugs

The Fisher Group have published a new paper in Nature Biotechnology.Jasmin Fisher's group, working with colleagues in the Clinical School and external collaborators, have published a paper in Nature Biotechnology entitled "Decoding the regulatory network of early blood development from single-cell gene expression measurements". The research team ho…

13 Apr 2018

Canary genome reveals hormone-sensitive gene regulation in singing birds

The Ralser Group have published a new paper in the journal Genome Biology.Nature lovers are fascinated by the increasing number of singing birds when spring is approaching. Scientists can study this seasonal phenomenon as they are able to investigate the underlying mechanisms by which hormones guide our body and behaviour. A team of researchers fro…

13 Apr 2018

Role of Matrin3 in disease elucidated

The Smith Group have published a new paper in The EMBO Journal.Matrin3 is an abundant nuclear matrix protein with both DNA and RNA binding domains. Mutations in Matrin3 were recently shown to be associated with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Motor Neuron Disease), yet the cellular functions of Matrin3 have remained unclear. Chris Smith's group now …