Posted in Biochemistry, Chemistry, Glycobiology, tagged Alzheimer's disease, EU, heparan sulfate, neuroscience, postdoctoral position, research, science on March 23, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Two postdoc positions are available in my lab.
Both are part of the larger, European Commission-funded FET-Open programme, ArrestAD, which has recently been funded.
Position 1 aims to characterise heparin-binding proteins in Alzhiemer’s disease.
Position 2 aims to develop inhibitors to Golgi sulfotransferases. (more…)
Posted in Biochemistry, Development, Fibroblast growth factor, Glycobiology, Peer review, Science process, Science publishing, tagged extracellular matrix, FGF, Fibroblast growth factor, glycosaminoglycan, heparan sulfate, regenerative medicine, tissue repair on January 12, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Biochemistry, Chemistry, Fibroblast growth factor, Glycobiology, Nanotechnology, Scientific progress, tagged antithrombin III, chondroitin sulfate, extracellular matrix, FGF, Fibroblast growth factor, glycosaminoglycans, heparan sulfate, heparin, imaging, Nanoparticle, Nanoparticles, Nanotechnology, polysaccharide, Science progress on June 12, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Of nanoparticles, cells and polyanions
It is the end of semester 2 so it’s marking season. Since we double mark (a good thing), the final year research projects are marked by both supervisor and an assessor, a member of staff who is not involved in the project. One of the projects I marked was Gemma Carolan’s on “How do SmartFlares RNA detection probes reach the cytosol? Available are the PDF of report, and posts here and here.
I had a sense of déjà vu while reading the project – the clear endosomal location of the SmartFlares, regardless of the DNA sequences brought me back to the days when antisense was the technology of the future for medicine.
While evaluating new technology it is useful to go back and look at other high flying technology. The reality is that it takes decades before we know whether the promise (and hype) were justified; this is true for any hot topic from stem cells to nanoparticles and graphene.
Antisense effects can be mediated by RNAse H, an enzyme that specifically cleaves RNA-DNA duplexes and which protects our cells from RNA viruses. There are other mechanisms, e.g., interference with splicing or translation, but the RNAse-H mediated transcript degradation should be central to many antisense effects. There were many papers reporting specific effects (evidenced by differences between sense, antisense and scrambled oligonucleotides sequences). These certainly contributed to success of individuals and of institutions, e.g., in UK Research Assessment Exercise and grant awards.
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Posted in Biochemistry, Glycobiology, Imaging, Peer review, Post publication peer review, Research integrity, tagged extracellular matrix, glycosaminoglycans, heparan sulfate, heparin, imaging, Research integrity, Science progress, VEGF on May 28, 2015| Leave a Comment »
I am a fan of PubPeer, as it provides a forum for discussion between authors and the wider community, something I have discussed in a number of posts (two examples being here and here). Two days ago, My colleague Mike Cross came by my office, having just delivered a pile of exam scripts for second marking (it’s exam and marking season), asking if I had seen a comment on our paper on PubPeer. I had not – too many e-mails and too busy to look at incoming!
So I looked at the question, which relates to panels in two figures being identical in our paper on neuropilin-1 and vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGFA) – indeed they are labelled as being identical.
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Posted in Biochemistry, Glycobiology, tagged extracellular matrix, glycosaminoglycans, heparan sulfate, heparin, PhD, polysaccharide on February 19, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Congratulations to Quentin Nunes, who today successfully defended his PhD today. His first paper from his thesis work was published in late 2013 in Pancreatology. This was an analysis, using public datasets of mRNA expression data, of the putative heparin-binding protein network in the healthy pancreas and in pancreatic digestive diseases. The latter part of his thesis work will be submitted for publication soon (watch this space!) and is a proteomics analysis of heparin-binding proteins in mouse pancreas and in a mouse model of acute pancreatitis.
Posted in Biochemistry, Development, Fibroblast growth factor, Glycobiology, tagged extracellular matrix, FGF, Fibroblast growth factor, glycosaminoglycans, heparan sulfate, heparin, polysaccharide, research, science on October 24, 2014| 3 Comments »
Virginie’s first paper on her thesis work, “Network based meta-analysis prediction of microenvironmental relays involved in stemness of human embryonic stem cells” was published yesterday at PeerJ. She first put it up as a preprint (v1 here
revised v2 here and then submitted it – my first experience of this and something I will certainly do again.
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Posted in Biochemistry, Chemistry, Development, Fibroblast growth factor, Glycobiology, Scientific progress, tagged antithrombin III, chondroitin sulfate, extracellular matrix, FGF, Fibroblast growth factor, glycosaminoglycans, heparan sulfate, heparin, polysaccharide, Science progress on October 10, 2014| 5 Comments »
There are many prizes for cultural activities, of which science is one. This week has seen the announcement of the Nobel prizes, a little earlier the IgNobels were awarded. There are, of course many other prizes. I have decided to set up my own.
A question that bugs me and which loomed large while I read the excellent review by Ding Xu and Jeff Esko from UCSD on “Demystifying Heparan Sulfate–Protein Interactions” is how many extracellular proteins are there? (more…)
