Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and facing the challenges and opportunities of a post-Brexit world, the UK government must deliver on the vision of its innovation strategy with increased funding for scientific research. The success of the life sciences sector will be key to the delivery of the government’s scientific superpower ambitions. Boosting public funding will depend on continued political, and therefore public, support. With reference to his career in politics and industry, Ian Taylor shows how effective communication with the public, providing reassurance and dispelling myths, is central to the sector sustaining success in the long term.
{"title":"Government science ambitions require greater funding and wider public understanding","authors":"I. Taylor","doi":"10.1042/bio_2021_201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1042/bio_2021_201","url":null,"abstract":"Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and facing the challenges and opportunities of a post-Brexit world, the UK government must deliver on the vision of its innovation strategy with increased funding for scientific research. The success of the life sciences sector will be key to the delivery of the government’s scientific superpower ambitions. Boosting public funding will depend on continued political, and therefore public, support. With reference to his career in politics and industry, Ian Taylor shows how effective communication with the public, providing reassurance and dispelling myths, is central to the sector sustaining success in the long term.","PeriodicalId":35334,"journal":{"name":"Biochemist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41584691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lipidomics refers to the large-scale analysis of the complete set of lipids – the ‘lipidome’ – in any biological system. Methodologically, it heavily relies on mass spectrometry, an analytic technique enabling the identification and quantification of molecules in a complex sample based on slight differences in their mass and charge. Recent advances in this field have fuelled the development of novel approaches including tracer lipidomics and spatial lipidomics, allowing an unprecedented insight into this complex class of biomolecules. As lipids play numerous physiological roles and are affected in a wide range of pathologies, the study of lipids and their metabolic pathways offers great potential for biomarker discovery and for the development of novel therapeutic interventions.
{"title":"A beginner’s guide to lipidomics","authors":"J. Swinnen, J. Dehairs","doi":"10.1042/bio_2021_181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1042/bio_2021_181","url":null,"abstract":"Lipidomics refers to the large-scale analysis of the complete set of lipids – the ‘lipidome’ – in any biological system. Methodologically, it heavily relies on mass spectrometry, an analytic technique enabling the identification and quantification of molecules in a complex sample based on slight differences in their mass and charge. Recent advances in this field have fuelled the development of novel approaches including tracer lipidomics and spatial lipidomics, allowing an unprecedented insight into this complex class of biomolecules. As lipids play numerous physiological roles and are affected in a wide range of pathologies, the study of lipids and their metabolic pathways offers great potential for biomarker discovery and for the development of novel therapeutic interventions.","PeriodicalId":35334,"journal":{"name":"Biochemist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49481220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The most notable moment in my career as a biochemist was the discovery of phosphotyrosine, a somewhat serendipitous finding that turned out to have some very important consequences, notably, in human cancer. My career as a biochemist which has spanned nearly 60 years, began when I was 16. At the time, I was in the sixth form at Felsted School, a boarding school in Essex England, and my biology master, David Sturdy, elected to teach me some extracurricular biochemistry, giving me one-on-one tutorials on glycolysis and the TCA cycle. These early biochemistry lessons turned out to be invaluable because I was able to regurgitate them to answer a question in the University of Cambridge scholarship exam in the autumn of 1960. As a result, I was lucky enough to be awarded an Exhibition at Gonville and Caius College, the college where my father had studied for a medical degree during World War II. When I arrived in Cambridge in October 1962 to read natural sciences (see Figure 1), it was a natural choice to take biochemistry as one of my three required first-year courses. The Part I biochemistry course was taught by a series of excellent lecturers, including Philip Randle (a prominent diabetes researcher who described the Randle Cycle), Brian Chappell (who discovered mitochondrial transporters) and Asher Korner (a pioneer of cell free systems to study protein synthesis). It quickly became clear that biochemistry was an exciting subject, and Brian Chappell, my biochemistry supervisor at Caius, made supervisions a lot of fun. I also took Part I courses in invertebrate zoology and, importantly, organic chemistry, which gave me insights into how the metabolites we were learning about in biochemistry worked as chemicals.
在我作为生物化学家的职业生涯中，最值得注意的时刻是发现磷酸酪氨酸，这是一个偶然的发现，后来被证明对人类癌症有一些非常重要的影响。我的生物化学家生涯从16岁开始，至今已有近60年的历史。当时，我在英国埃塞克斯郡的一所寄宿学校费尔斯特德学校读六年级，我的生物老师大卫·斯特迪选择教我一些课外生物化学，给我一对一地讲授糖酵解和三羧酸循环。这些早期的生物化学课程后来被证明是无价的，因为1960年秋天，在剑桥大学奖学金考试中，我能够反刍它们来回答一个问题。结果，我很幸运地在冈维尔和凯斯学院(Gonville and Caius College)获得了一次展览的机会。二战期间，我父亲曾在这里攻读医学学位。1962年10月，当我来到剑桥学习自然科学(见图1)时，我很自然地选择了生物化学作为我第一年的三门必修课之一。第一部分生物化学课程由一系列优秀的讲师讲授，包括菲利普·兰德尔(一位著名的糖尿病研究者，他描述了兰德尔循环)、布莱恩·查佩尔(他发现了线粒体转运蛋白)和阿瑟·科纳(他是研究蛋白质合成的无细胞系统的先驱)。我很快意识到，生物化学是一门令人兴奋的学科，我在凯斯大学的生物化学导师布赖恩·查佩尔(Brian Chappell)让我的指导工作变得非常有趣。我还参加了第一部分的无脊椎动物学课程，更重要的是，还有有机化学课程，这让我对我们在生物化学中所学的代谢物是如何作为化学物质起作用的有了更深的了解。
{"title":"My biochemical journey from a Cambridge undergraduate to the discovery of phosphotyrosine","authors":"T. Hunter","doi":"10.1042/bio_2021_197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1042/bio_2021_197","url":null,"abstract":"The most notable moment in my career as a biochemist was the discovery of phosphotyrosine, a somewhat serendipitous finding that turned out to have some very important consequences, notably, in human cancer. My career as a biochemist which has spanned nearly 60 years, began when I was 16. At the time, I was in the sixth form at Felsted School, a boarding school in Essex England, and my biology master, David Sturdy, elected to teach me some extracurricular biochemistry, giving me one-on-one tutorials on glycolysis and the TCA cycle. These early biochemistry lessons turned out to be invaluable because I was able to regurgitate them to answer a question in the University of Cambridge scholarship exam in the autumn of 1960. As a result, I was lucky enough to be awarded an Exhibition at Gonville and Caius College, the college where my father had studied for a medical degree during World War II. When I arrived in Cambridge in October 1962 to read natural sciences (see Figure 1), it was a natural choice to take biochemistry as one of my three required first-year courses. The Part I biochemistry course was taught by a series of excellent lecturers, including Philip Randle (a prominent diabetes researcher who described the Randle Cycle), Brian Chappell (who discovered mitochondrial transporters) and Asher Korner (a pioneer of cell free systems to study protein synthesis). It quickly became clear that biochemistry was an exciting subject, and Brian Chappell, my biochemistry supervisor at Caius, made supervisions a lot of fun. I also took Part I courses in invertebrate zoology and, importantly, organic chemistry, which gave me insights into how the metabolites we were learning about in biochemistry worked as chemicals.","PeriodicalId":35334,"journal":{"name":"Biochemist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45965999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sir Dai Rees (28 April 1936 to 10 June 2021)","authors":"P. Lillford, Chris Lawson","doi":"10.1042/bio_2021_200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1042/bio_2021_200","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35334,"journal":{"name":"Biochemist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43986197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since December 2019, the world has found itself rocked by the emergence of a highly contagious novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19, caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. The global scientific community has rapidly come together to understand the virus and identify potential treatments and vaccine strategies to minimise the impact on public health. Key to this has been the use of cutting-edge technological advances in DNA and RNA sequencing, allowing identification of changes in the viral genome sequence as the infection spreads. This approach has allowed a widespread ‘genomic epidemiology’ approach to infection control, whereby viral transmission (e.g. in healthcare settings) can be detected not only by epidemiological assessment, but also by identifying similarities between viral sub-types among individuals. The UK has been at the forefront of this response, with researchers collaborating with public health agencies and NHS Trusts across the UK to form the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium. Genomic surveillance at this scale has provided critical insight into the virulence and transmission of the virus, enabling near real-time monitoring of variants of concern and informing infection control measures on local, national and global scales. In the future, next-generation sequencing technologies, such as nanopore sequencing, are likely to become ubiquitous in diagnostic and healthcare settings, marking the transition to a new era of molecular medicine.
{"title":"A pandemic in the age of next-generation sequencing","authors":"A. Beckett, K. Cook, S. Robson","doi":"10.1042/bio_2021_187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1042/bio_2021_187","url":null,"abstract":"Since December 2019, the world has found itself rocked by the emergence of a highly contagious novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19, caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. The global scientific community has rapidly come together to understand the virus and identify potential treatments and vaccine strategies to minimise the impact on public health. Key to this has been the use of cutting-edge technological advances in DNA and RNA sequencing, allowing identification of changes in the viral genome sequence as the infection spreads. This approach has allowed a widespread ‘genomic epidemiology’ approach to infection control, whereby viral transmission (e.g. in healthcare settings) can be detected not only by epidemiological assessment, but also by identifying similarities between viral sub-types among individuals. The UK has been at the forefront of this response, with researchers collaborating with public health agencies and NHS Trusts across the UK to form the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium. Genomic surveillance at this scale has provided critical insight into the virulence and transmission of the virus, enabling near real-time monitoring of variants of concern and informing infection control measures on local, national and global scales. In the future, next-generation sequencing technologies, such as nanopore sequencing, are likely to become ubiquitous in diagnostic and healthcare settings, marking the transition to a new era of molecular medicine.","PeriodicalId":35334,"journal":{"name":"Biochemist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48157930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tales from the lab","authors":"Andrew N Holding","doi":"10.1042/bio_2021_189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1042/bio_2021_189","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35334,"journal":{"name":"Biochemist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42081894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Algae made our world possible, and it can help us make the future more sustainable; but we need to change the way we live and adopt new more efficient production systems, and we need to do that now. When the world was new, the atmosphere was mainly carbon dioxide, and no animal life was possible. Along came algae with the process of photosynthesis, and things began to change. Ancient cyanobacteria algae turned carbon dioxide into enormous sums of lipids, proteins and carbohydrates, while they secreted oxygen into the atmosphere. Over a billion years, as oxygen filled the air and algae filled the seas, animal life became possible. Eventually all that algae biomass became petroleum and natural gas, which for eons sat undisturbed in vast underground reservoirs, holding enormous sums of untapped energy. Less than 200 years ago humans learned to tap these energy reserves to create the world we know today, but in so doing, we have released millions of years of stored CO2 back into the atmosphere. Algae can again help make the world a better place, but this will require new thinking and new ways of producing our food, feed and fuels. We need an algae revolution 2.0.
{"title":"The algae revolution 2.0: the potential of algae for the production of food, feed, fuel and bioproducts – why we need it now","authors":"S. Mayfield, M. Burkart","doi":"10.1042/bio_2021_190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1042/bio_2021_190","url":null,"abstract":"Algae made our world possible, and it can help us make the future more sustainable; but we need to change the way we live and adopt new more efficient production systems, and we need to do that now. When the world was new, the atmosphere was mainly carbon dioxide, and no animal life was possible. Along came algae with the process of photosynthesis, and things began to change. Ancient cyanobacteria algae turned carbon dioxide into enormous sums of lipids, proteins and carbohydrates, while they secreted oxygen into the atmosphere. Over a billion years, as oxygen filled the air and algae filled the seas, animal life became possible. Eventually all that algae biomass became petroleum and natural gas, which for eons sat undisturbed in vast underground reservoirs, holding enormous sums of untapped energy. Less than 200 years ago humans learned to tap these energy reserves to create the world we know today, but in so doing, we have released millions of years of stored CO2 back into the atmosphere. Algae can again help make the world a better place, but this will require new thinking and new ways of producing our food, feed and fuels. We need an algae revolution 2.0.","PeriodicalId":35334,"journal":{"name":"Biochemist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46486451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Carbohydrates are ubiquitous in nature and present across all kingdoms of life – bacteria, fungi, viruses, yeast, plants, animals and humans. They are essential to many biological processes. However, due to their complexity and heterogeneous nature they are often neglected, sometimes referred to as the ‘dark matter’ of biology. Nevertheless, due to their extensive biological impact on health and disease, glycans and the field of glycobiology have become increasingly popular in recent years, giving rise to glycan-based drug development and therapeutics. Forecasting of communicable diseases predicts that we will see an increase in pandemics of humans and livestock due to global loss of biodiversity from changes to land use, intensification of agriculture, climate change and disruption of ecosystems. As such, the development of point-of-care devices to detect pathogens is vital to prevent the transmission of infectious disease, as we have seen with the COVID-19 pandemic. So, can glycans be exploited to detect COVID-19 and other infectious diseases? And is this technology sensitive and accurate? Here, I discuss the structure and function of glycans, the current glycan-based therapeutics and how glycan binding can be exploited for detection of infectious disease, like COVID-19.
{"title":"Glycans for the greater good","authors":"J. Lloyd","doi":"10.1042/bio_2021_186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1042/bio_2021_186","url":null,"abstract":"Carbohydrates are ubiquitous in nature and present across all kingdoms of life – bacteria, fungi, viruses, yeast, plants, animals and humans. They are essential to many biological processes. However, due to their complexity and heterogeneous nature they are often neglected, sometimes referred to as the ‘dark matter’ of biology. Nevertheless, due to their extensive biological impact on health and disease, glycans and the field of glycobiology have become increasingly popular in recent years, giving rise to glycan-based drug development and therapeutics. Forecasting of communicable diseases predicts that we will see an increase in pandemics of humans and livestock due to global loss of biodiversity from changes to land use, intensification of agriculture, climate change and disruption of ecosystems. As such, the development of point-of-care devices to detect pathogens is vital to prevent the transmission of infectious disease, as we have seen with the COVID-19 pandemic. So, can glycans be exploited to detect COVID-19 and other infectious diseases? And is this technology sensitive and accurate? Here, I discuss the structure and function of glycans, the current glycan-based therapeutics and how glycan binding can be exploited for detection of infectious disease, like COVID-19.","PeriodicalId":35334,"journal":{"name":"Biochemist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46452012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The genetic signature of natural CRISPR-Cas systems were first noted in a 1989 publication and were characterized in detail from 2002 to 2007, culminating in the first report of a prokaryotic adaptive immune system. Since then, CRISPR-Cas enzymes have been adapted into molecular biology tools that have transformed genetic engineering across domains of life. In this feature article, we describe origins, uses and futures of CRISPR-Cas enzymes in genetic engineering: we highlight advances made in the past 10 years. Central to these advances is appreciation of interplay between CRISPR engineering and DNA repair. We highlight how this relationship has been manipulated to create further advances in the development of gene editing.
{"title":"CRISPR systems: what’s new, where next?","authors":"Ashley Parkes, Fiona E Kemm, Liu He, Tom Killelea","doi":"10.1042/bio_2021_194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1042/bio_2021_194","url":null,"abstract":"The genetic signature of natural CRISPR-Cas systems were first noted in a 1989 publication and were characterized in detail from 2002 to 2007, culminating in the first report of a prokaryotic adaptive immune system. Since then, CRISPR-Cas enzymes have been adapted into molecular biology tools that have transformed genetic engineering across domains of life. In this feature article, we describe origins, uses and futures of CRISPR-Cas enzymes in genetic engineering: we highlight advances made in the past 10 years. Central to these advances is appreciation of interplay between CRISPR engineering and DNA repair. We highlight how this relationship has been manipulated to create further advances in the development of gene editing.","PeriodicalId":35334,"journal":{"name":"Biochemist","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41618873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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