First FGF paper

A superb FGF Gordon Research Conference closes. One frequent question was the identity of the first paper on FGFs . Thankfully it is a paper published by a learned society, so it is available from the Company of Biologists as a PDF.

Studies on the growth of tissues in vitro VI. The effects of some tissue extracts on the growth of periosteal fibroblasts

Trowell, OA and Willmer, EN

JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY Volume: 16 Issue: 1 Pages: 60-70 Published: JAN 1939

Well worth a read in my opinion. When I first got a copy from the library, I caught a bad cold from the dust on the volume. Now the PDF is available, this should no longer be a problem!

Spectroscopy reveals a degree of order

Gareth Holder’s paper, just published in Soft Matter, is the latest from a long-standing collaboration with Peter Weightman in Physics and Ed Yates in Integrative Biology. The paper highlights some surprising features of heparin. Unlike an uncharged model polysaccharide heparin chains clearly have the potential to produce long-range order. Our next challenge is to see if this holds up in mixtures and in the presence of proteins. Nonetheless, this work raises intriguing possibilities for extracellular matrices to possess long-range order of nanoscale structural units

Chondroitin sulfate increases fear in fish….

A rather interesting video, courtesy of William Birch at IMRE, which suggests that zebrafish can detect CS released by injured fish and that this causes a fear response. Makes sense, in that injury to skin would release CS and uninjured fish would want to move away from whatever has bitten the injured fish.

FGF GRC

Arrived at les Diablerets late afternoon for the FGF Gordon Research Conference. A fantastic conference venue and it is great to have a week to look forward to discussions with colleagues on our favourite proteins.

Structural insights into the bacterial type II secretion system

Richard Pickersgill from Queen Mary University of London will deliver a seminar on Monday 14th May at 13:00 in LT3 entitled “Structural insights into the bacterial type II secretion system “.

Richard’s work is an example of the contribution that structural biology can make to infection biology, food security and biotechnology. In particular, he will describe his latest results on the bacterial type II secretion system. Richard is an entertaining and lively speaker and his talks are always enjoyable.

The first part of the seminar is concerned with synthetic biology underpinning industrial biotechnology, the second with studies of a bacterial secretion system important in human disease and food security. Firstly, some highlights will be presented from recent work on carbohydrate active enzymes and enzymes of cobalamin biosynthesis. Remarkably, several of the cobalamin biosynthetic enzymes trap (and do not readily release) their products. Another way of trapping reactive and labile pathway intermediates is to enclose them and the enzymes of the pathway in a microcompartment (bioreactor) and I shall briefly describe work on bacterial microcompartment shell proteins. The second part of the seminar will look at the molecular basis of the interaction between the outer-membrane secretin and the lipoprotein pilotin essential for its correct assembly in the outer-membrane of several bacteria. These and other essential interactions will be discussed along with opportunities for halting the secretion system and preventing disease.

Birthday of a mathematician and scientist with integrity

Vito Volterra’s birthday was May 3. Volterra was a noted Italian mathematician, who is perhaps best known for developing differential and integral equations and his contributions to mathematical biology, a key area of endeavour nowadays. He lost his job at the University of Rome for refusing to attend Benito Mussolini’s party to drink with them.

Seminar on “Axonal transport in neurodegenerative diseases”

Chris Miller, Professor of Molecular Neuroscience in the Departments of Neuroscience and Clinical Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London will be giving his seminar on Monday 23rd of April, 1pm, LT3.

ents of Neuroscience and Clinical Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. His research focuses on the mechanisms of nerve cell death in Alzheimer’s disease and motor neuron disease (also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis -ALS). He is particularly interested in protein and organelle trafficking in neurons since there is evidence that these processes are disrupted in Alzheimer’s disease and ALS. Notably, transport of protein and organelle cargoes through axons (axonal transport) is an early pathological feature in these disorders. The early damage to axonal transport argues that defective axonal transport contributes to the disease process in a primary fashion and is not just some end-stage epiphenomena.

His group utilise cell, molecular, proteomic and advanced imaging methods including analyses of transgenic mice, to dissect the mechanisms that control transport of key Alzheimer’s disease and ALS related cargoes. They are also attempting to understand how insults associated with these diseases impact upon protein and organelle transport.