Microplastics are getting into mosquitoes and contaminating new food chains

Tiny fragments of plastic are being eaten by water-dwelling mosquito larvae and retained in their bodies as they develop to the flying stage, contaminating new food chains as the insects are eaten by bats and birds. Reading’s Dr Amanda Callaghan, who made the finding, tells us more in a new post for The Conversation.

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Research Seminar: Biological Sciences

Talks take place between 1.00pm and 1.50pm in Harbourne Lecture Theatre and are followed by refreshments and an informal chat in Harbourne Foyer.

All welcome.

Slot One:

Talk by Dr Ioannis Zoulias

Subject TBC

Slot Two:

Talk by Dr Jo Baker

Subject TBC

Research Seminar: Platelet factor XIII

Talks take place between 1.00pm and 1.50pm in Harbourne Lecture Theatre and are followed by refreshments and an informal chat in Harbourne Foyer.

All welcome.

Slot One:

Talk by Dr Jo Mitchel

The role of platelet factor XIII in the regulation of thrombus stability’

Slot Two:

Talk by Dr Mojgan Rabiey

Subject TBC

Research Seminar: The bTB vaccine

Talks take place between 1.00pm and 1.50pm in Harbourne Lecture Theatre and are followed by refreshments and an informal chat in Harbourne Foyer.

All welcome.

Slot One:

Talk by Dr Deepa Paliwal

The reverse immunology to bTB vaccine’

Slot Two:

Talk by Dr Andrea Moteagudo#

Subject TBC

Research Seminar: Platelets and oxidative stress signalling

Talks take place between 1.00pm and 1.50pm in Harbourne Lecture Theatre and are followed by refreshments and an informal chat in Harbourne Foyer.

All welcome.

Slot One:

Talk by Dr Francoise Mazet

The Virtual Platelet, a tale of Time and Space’

Slot Two:

Talk by Dr Kerry Roston

Oxidative stress signalling through ASK1 and p38-MAPK regulates cardiomyocyte gene expression and induces hypertrophy.’

Research Seminar – MSK1 and the ecology of soil

Talks take place between 1.00pm and 1.50pm in Harbourne Lecture Theatre and are followed by refreshments and an informal chat in Harbourne Foyer.

All welcome.

Slot One:

Talk by Dr Thomais Markou

‘The role of MSK1 (Mitogen- and stress-activated protein kinase-1) in cardiac remodelling induced by hypertrophy or oxidative stress’

Slot Two:

Talk by Dr Alice Johnston

‘The metabolic ecology of soils’

Research Seminar: Gene Synthesis

Latest Developments in Synthetic Biology : Gene Synthesis | Protein Expression | CRISPR 

Talk by Gavin Allsop (Fisher Scientific)

Overview

Gene synthesis has become the most cost effective way to increase protein quality and yield,  but more interestingly affords us the ability to develop vastly improved protein expression platforms and genome editing tools.

Our proprietary algorithm GeneOptimizer has shown vast improvements to protein expression, especially when used alongside ExpiCHO, Expi293 and ExpiSf. Here, one should come to expect expression yields in excess of 100s mg/L. Furthermore, with improvements to sequence clonability, site saturation mutagenesis and TRIM technology, the R&D team from Thermo Fisher Scientific have come to expect editing efficiencies of 90% in primary T cells; through updated Cas9 RNP based editing strategies.

This seminar promises to  explore peer reviewed data leading up to these developments. To look at improvements to HDR template design, editing in PAM deserts, functional protein screening and offers and end to off the shelf vector limitations.

Annual Cole Lecture: The Egg and Sperm Race

We are delighted to welcome gyuest speaker Professor Matthew Cobb, Professor of Zoology at University of Manchester to deliver this year’s Cole Lecture

Where do we come from? For thousands of years we really had no clue. In the mid-seventeenth century, human eggs and sperm were discovered but their role wasn’t understood for another 180 years. Professor Matthew Cobb will describe how these amazing discoveries were made, and how rivalry spilled over into enmity.

Prizewinning research: From bones to data – the evolution of dinosaur science

By Dr Manabu Sakamoto, palaeontologist, University of Reading

Think of a palaeontologist. What comes to mind? You might be thinking of Sam Neill in the film ‘Jurassic Park’, Ross from the sitcom ‘Friends’, or some white-gloved employee of the Natural History Museum.

Now think of them ‘doing’ palaeontology. You will probably imagine them digging up fossilized bones, extracting ancient DNA from amber, or piecing together a skeleton like some kind of Jurassic jigsaw.

What about doing maths, or poring over a spreadsheet? Probably not. Yet some of the most exciting dinosaur discoveries in our field come not from fieldwork, but from detailed analysis and reanalysis of the data.

Why is that? Well, understanding how and why biodiversity waxes and wanes through Earth history over hundreds of millions of years is a fundamental goal of paleontology and evolutionary biology alike.

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Prizes awarded for outstanding research outputs

Dinosaurs, chickens and the Russian revolution were among the topics that won University of Reading academics prizes for their research last week.

The prize winners with Prof Steve Mithen, Lord Waldegrave, and Sir David Bell

The five academics, one from each research theme, were honoured with a Research Output Prize for Early Career Researchers at University Court, the showcase annual event for the University community, on 20 March.

Professor Steve Mithen, Deputy Vice Chancellor, said: “Congratulations to all five winners. They were selected by peer-review from a strong field of outputs by our Early Career Researchers in each of our five research themes.

“Whether having produced single or multi-authored works, the success of these award winners represents not only their own outstanding achievement , but the support and hard work of many more people at the University and further afield.”

The winners from each theme were:

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