2 News

4 Research

6 Business and Community

8 News in Brief

Faculty of Life SciencesNewsletter

Research

Survival of the Cutestpage 5

Issue 16, March 2010

News

Rising Starof Sciencepage 3

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The Faculty of Life Sciencesenjoyed a Royal visit whenHRH The Countess ofWessex came to see thework of The HealingFoundation Centre, whichaims to advance theunderstanding of woundhealing and tissueregeneration.

The Countess is the Patron of The HealingFoundation and this was her first visit to one oftheir research centres to see the scientists at work.It was also her first ever visit to the University.

The Healing Foundation is a national UK charity thatchampions the cause of people living withdisfigurement and visible loss of function by fundingresearch into pioneering scientific, surgical andpsychological healing techniques. Manchester's HealingFoundation Centre represents a 25 year, £10 millioncommitment between The Healing Foundation andthe University, its ultimate goal to identify treatmentsthat will improve the lives of patients withdisfigurements, either congenital, or followingaccident and disease. As a first step towards this goal,the centre is investigating the mechanisms of woundhealing and tissue regeneration at the most basiccellular, molecular and genetic level, using a variety ofmodel systems, including frogs, mice and fruit flies.

Centre Director Professor Enrique Amaya said:"The visit was a smashing success. The Countesswas very engaged and enjoyed her visit.

"We have met before, when I gave a presentationat a charity event she ran for The HealingFoundation at Buckingham Palace. Mypresentations have lots of videos, but seeing thework in the labs, looking down the microscopes, isvery different, and more exciting."

The Countess was met at the entrance of AV Hillby President and Vice Chancellor Professor AlanGilbert, Dean of the Faculty of Life SciencesProfessor Martin Humphries and other dignitaries.

She was then taken by Enrique across the tunnelinto the Michael Smith Building for a tour of thelabs, meeting scientists and students in the Centrestudying embryonic wound healing and tissueregeneration in frogs. Frog embryos and tadpoleshave remarkable capacities to heal wounds andregenerate complex tissues. She also met new FLSfaculty member Tom Millard, who is researchingwound healing in fruit fly embryos. Fruit fliesprovide a powerful model to investigate thegenetic basis of wound healing, in a system withstrong genetic correlation to humans.

Faculty EnjoysRoyal Visit

Tom has been joined by another new facultymember in the Centre Kim Mace, who is studyingchronic wound healing associated with diabetes.Figures show that the NHS spends £600 million ayear on treating foot problems in people withdiabetes, and £252 million of this is spent onamputations, as result of poor healing.

Professor Amaya said: "We are looking to expandthe centre further. We have the capacity to house50 people and have half of that now. The workthat we are doing is in its infancy, there's lots to bedone, which makes it very exciting. We arerecruiting groups with common interests in tissuerepair and regeneration, and have collaborationswith clinicians, so we can see advances in both ourbasic science work and its applications."

For more information on the Centre, which wasformally opened by the Healing Foundation LeadAmbassador Simon Weston OBE in 2007, see http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/enrique.amaya/healing.htm.

HRH The Countess of Wessexwith Professor Enrique Amaya

Scientists celebrate 30 years of prestigious prizeFormer winners of the Weizmann Prize for Biochemistry were reunited atthe University to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the prestigious award.

News

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Flying high!The Faculty of Life Sciences haswon a Silver Athena SWANaward for its hard work andachievement in providingpositive support for womenworking in science, engineeringand technology (SET) at keycareer transition points.

This follows University-wide success whenManchester won a Bronze Athena SWAN in 2008.

The Faculty has shown commitment to changingthe culture and gender balance in decisionmaking and was applauded by the judging panelfor its work on ensuring gender balance in therecruitment and development of staff.

Professor Alison Gurney, representative of theFaculty on the SWAN Self-assessment panel,prepared the application after collecting,analysing and comparing key data on genderequality over the last three years. This includedfemale staff and student numbers, the genderprofile of staff at each grade and on decision-making committees, promotion applicationsand success, parental leave and flexibleworking. The group prepared an action plan toaddress remaining issues, such as theincreasingly low proportion of female staffwith increasing grade and the low numbers ofwomen applying for promotion. The actionplan will be rolled out over the next year.

Professor Gurney and the Faculty’s HR ManagerFiona Coll collected the award at a ceremony atthe Botanical Gardens in Birmingham.

Alongside the Athena SWAN Award, theFaculty has just launched a new website‘Women in Life Sciences – WiLS’. The Facultyis committed to developing a network andproviding positive support for all femaleacademic and research staff, administrativestaff and students within Life Sciences.

It aims to encourage women throughout theircareer in Manchester, with the aim ofincreasing recruitment, retention andprogression. Achieving this is part of a jointeffort between the Faculty, employers,mentors and individuals.

See www.manchester.ac.uk/lifesciences/wils

The Weizmann Prize for Biochemistry is awardedannually to the best final year undergraduate inBiochemistry at the University. It is named inhonour of Dr Chaim Weizmann, a formerManchester academic known as “the father ofindustrial fermentation”.

Dr Weizmann was a Reader in Chemistry atManchester when he became famous fordiscovering how to use bacterial fermentation toproduce large quantities of organic chemicals,including acetone that was used in themanufacture of cordite explosive propellantscritical to the Allied war effort.

Weizmann later became the founder of the state of Israel. He was elected as its firstPresident on 1 February 1949, and served untilhis death in 1952.

Chaim Weizmann also founded the Daniel SieffResearch Institute in Israel, since renamed theWeizmann Institute of Science, now one of theworld’s top-ranking multidisciplinary researchinstitutions. The Weizmann Institute has 2,600students and staff and awards MSc and PhDdegrees in mathematics, computer science,physics, chemistry, biological chemistry andbiology, as well as several interdisciplinaryprogrammes and youth programmes. Its

academics include Professor Ada Yonath, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Former Weizmann Prize winner, now Vice Presidentand Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences, ProfessorMartin Humphries said: “We were very proud to mark30 years of such an important award. I was honouredto win the award back in 1980, and as a consequenceI have always felt a direct association with ChaimWeizmann. I want to thank Weizmann UK for theircontinued support of our undergraduate programme.

“I am particularly pleased that the Faculty of LifeSciences has now developed a number of strongresearch links with scientists at the Weizmann Institute,and I hope these links will expand and flourish. TheWeizmann's commitment to scientific excellence andits well-earned successes make it a valued partner.”

Professor Humphries and 13 other former WeizmannPrize winners were joined by the President of theWeizmann Institute Professor Daniel Zajfman. Hesaid: “When Dr Chaim Weizmann arrived inManchester in the summer of 1904, he was a youngscientist, not yet 30 years old. Here he embarkedupon the scientific career that would lead him toimportant discoveries and culminate in establishingthe Weizmann Institute of Science. So it is fitting thatthe Weizmann Prize encourages young scientists atthe start of their own quest for insight and impact.”

Seewww.weizmann.org.ukwww.weizmann.ac.il

Spin out company secures funding to develop cleaner coatingsUniversity of Manchester spin out company Ai2 Limited, a developer ofpeptide coatings for medical application, has raised £250,000 from theUPF (the UMIP Premier Fund, managed by MTI).

Lord Turnberg with Professor Daniel Zajfman and Chris Cox (University Director of Development)

Fiona Coll and Professor Alison Gurney

Ai2 is developing an innovative peptide coating technology which is able to render medical devices andimplants antibacterial, thus potentially reducing the frequency of infection, a serious clinical problem.

The new investment will enable the company to progress the technology platform and seek alliances andpartnerships in specific applications, including contact lenses and wound dressings.

See www.a-i-2.comwww.umip.comwww.mtifirms.com

Ceri Harrop’s energetic efforts to bring scienceto the public include writing and presenting ashort television series, presenting a radio showand working as an ambassador for her subject inthe national EPSRC-funded New Outlooks InScience & Engineering (NOISE) campaign, as wellas founding and chairing the Wellcome TrustCentre for Cell Matrix Research (WTCCMR)public engagement committee.

All this while developing a 3D in vitro model ofthe human airways to study how asthma andother respiratory diseases can lead to changes inthe structure and function of the airways, in astudy funded by the Dr Hadwen Trust, a charitythat funds research to replace the use of animalsin experiments.

The Society of Biology’s Science CommunicationAwards, sponsored by Pfizer, recognise research-

active bioscientists from UK universities or instituteswho make an outstanding and consistentcontribution to communicating science to the public.

Ceri, who won the award’s New Researchercategory, said: “The taxpayers, or charity donors,fund our research. It is public money and they havea right to know what we are doing with it. Plus Idon’t think we give people enough credit – theyare interested in health, the environment and otherscience issues and we, as scientists, should makeresearch accessible to the public.

“It’s also both highly rewarding and enlightening totake your research to a different audience. It helpsyou see your work from a different perspective.”

The Faculty’s Vice President and Dean ProfessorMartin Humphries, who nominated Ceri, said: “InManchester, we are dedicated to employing staff

and producing graduates who are not onlyoutstanding professionals but also informed,ethically aware, socially responsible citizens. TheWTCCMR has responded to this challenge byelevating public engagement activity to a highpriority, and over the last few years we haveassembled a large network of lab staff andacademics who now see PE as a core aspect oftheir job. Ceri has played the principal leadingrole in driving these developments. She is a veryworthy winner of the Society of Biology ScienceCommunication Award.”

For more information seewww.wtccmr.manchester.ac.uk

Our rising star of scienceA young scientist in the Faculty’s Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell-Matrix Research has won a prestigiousSociety of Biology Science Communication Award.

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Professor Simon Hubbard is Manchester’s Academicsponsor on the project and sits on the programmeboard of UK Pub Med Central (UKPMC), which setup the new site, launched by Dame Sally C. Davies,Director General, Research and Development at theDepartment of Health. He also worked on some ofits sub-projects with MIMAS.

Simon and fellow Manchester colleagues attendedthe showcase event at the British Library whichlaunched a whole range of new search and data

mining tools designed to unlock the scientificknowledge held by UKPMC. The speakers includedSimon, Ingo Schiessl also from FLS andManchester's Professor Doug Kell, who is alsoChief Executive of the Biotechnology and BiologicalSciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Developed in direct consultation with researchers,it aims to become the information resource ofchoice for the UK biomedical and health researchcommunity. The Open Beta version of UKPMC will

enable researchers to search and link informationfrom literature and drill down into underlyingdatasets in new and innovative ways, as well aslink and manage their own grants and publicationsvia an expanded Grant Reporting System.

Seewww.ls.manchester.ac.uk/research/researchgroups/structuralandfunctionalsystems/http://mimas.ac.uk/http://ukpmc.ac.uk/

Faculty plays key role in new web resourceThe Faculty of Life Sciences, along with MIMAS and National Centre for Text Mining (NaCTeM), has had a keyrole in developing a new web interface to help researchers access and exploit over 1.7 million full-text, peerreviewed biomedical research articles and over 19 million other life science research papers.

Ceri Harrop

Research

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The team – from the Universities of Manchesterand Oregon and Yale - set up the ‘dinosaurdressage’ with the help of Hector, the UKResearch Council’s supercomputer, currently the20th fastest super computer in the world.

Dr Bill Sellers, at the Faculty of Life Sciences,said: “We found that hopping hadrosaurs werefastest but – for safety reasons – a two-leggedrunning gait was most likely. In the same waythat we can all muster a John Cleese ‘silly walk’few can sustain it!”

The team, funded by National Geographic andThe Natural Environment Research Council and

whose results were published in PalaeontologicaElectronica, has shown how more research canbe done to find out how large and fast animalsmoved, both living and extinct.

In the meantime, Jurassic fanatics can simulatetheir very own dinosaur as the software(Windows, Mac, Linux) and models are freelyavailable to download fromwww.animalsimulation.org.

Also seewww.ls.manchester.ac.uk/research/researchgroups/computationalandevolutionarybiology

Dinosaur dressageDinosaurs have literally been put through their paces by a newsupercomputer, allowing scientists to get closer to understandinghow they once moved.

Scientists reveal new pattern in ourdaily clockOur brain’s daily clock encodes time in a complexpattern that was previously unknown, and not by simply increasing its activity as the dayprogresses, scientists have revealed.

The findings of their study, published in Science,turn a long-held theory on circadian rhythms on itshead and mean that we may now be able todevelop new drugs and approaches to tune thedaily clock to treat sleep disorders and to aidrecovery from long-distance flights.

The team – the Faculty of Life Sciences’ Dr HughPiggins and Dr Mino Belle and the University ofMichigan’s Dr Daniel Forger and Casey Diekman–found that there were two basic types of neuronswith very different electrical properties in thebrain’s daily clock. One type (per1) was able tosurvive at unusually high levels of excitability thatwould kill most neurons in the brain. They alsoshowed a huge difference in their electricity level,or excitability, between day and night. The othertype of cells had very different electrical propertiesand could not survive the levels of excitabilitydisplayed by per1 neurons.

On further examination the team found that theper1 cells appeared to be silent during the daybecause they had become so excited that theycould not communicate in the typical way thatmost brain cells do. They had a lower, more easilytraced excitability level in the morning and at duskand were only truly silent at night. This flies in theface of accepted theory.

See www.ls.manchester.ac.uk/research/researchgroups/neurosciences

Berenika Plusa

Dinosaur body outlines modelled by Hector

Research Profile: Berenika Plusa

Berenika, currently a Manchester Fellow within theFaculty of Life Sciences, has had a productive careerso far. After obtaining her PhD in Biology ofDevelopment, with a special award from the ScientificCouncil of the Institute of Genetics and AnimalBreeding in 2000, she went on to undertakepostdoctoral positions at the University of Cambridge,Department of Genetics and at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.

Berenika was successful in obtaining a ManchesterFellowship in 2007, which offered five years supportfor salary and equipment directly funded by theFaculty. Since joining the Faculty, Berenika has had aperiod of maternity leave, and after returning towork, her research has continued to thrive within thelaboratory despite the pressures of family life. Shesaid: “I had excellent support from my husband andfamily once I came back to work, and it was great toget back into the lab again”. Just before returningfrom maternity leave, Berenika secured a three yearBBSRC grant to work on ‘the roles of cell polarity andpolarity proteins in cell fate decisions and epithelialdevelopment during primitive endoderm formation’.

The lab investigates various aspects of regulativeabilities of early mammalian embryos using themouse as a model organism. In particular, they arefocused on understanding how the first cell fate

decisions are made during preimplantationmammalian development and the role of cell-cellcommunication and cell plasticity in this process.Studying these early developmental decisions isvital for understanding normal development andimportant to shedding light on causes of earlymiscarriages and early pregnancy pathologies.Moreover, early embryos are sources of continuallyself-renewing embryonic stem cells, which can beinduced to differentiate into specific cell types suchas cardiac, neural or endocrine lineages in cultureand thus offer enormous prospects in the field ofregenerative medicine. Therefore, extendingknowledge of the mechanisms underlying celllineage specification and cellular reprogrammingduring normal development is not only crucial forunderstanding mammalian development but alsofor the advance of cell-based therapies of suchdiseases as diabetes or Parkinson’s disease.

At the present Berenika’s lab is concentrating onidentifying the point during development whencells become irreversibly committed to the firstthree embryonic lineages and factors thatcontribute to these decisions.

See www.ls.manchester.ac.uk/research/researchgroups/developmentalbiology/

“The US has set the ambitious goal ofgenerating a third of all liquid fuel fromrenewable source by the year 2025. Estimatessuggest to reach their goal they would need 1billion tonnes of biomass, which is a lot,” saysProfessor Simon Turner, whose BBSRC-fundedstudy is published in Development.

“Our work has identified the two genes thatmake plants grow outwards. The long, thin cellsgrowing down the length of a plant divideoutwards, giving that nice radial pattern ofcharacteristic growth rings in trees. So you get asolid ring of wood in the centre surrounded bygrowing cells. Now we have identified the

process by which the cells know how to growoutwards, we hope to find a way of making thatplants grow thicker quicker, giving us the increasedwood production that could be used for biofuels orother uses.

“And there is an added benefit. There are concernsthat the growing of biofuel products competes withessential food production. However, the part of theplant we have studied is the stalk – not the grain – sothere will be no competition with food production.”

Professor Turner and Dr Peter Etchells studied theplant Arabidopsis, particularly the growth in itsvascular bundles, and found that the genes PXY

Gene discovery helps green goalFaculty scientists have identified the genes that make plants grow fatter and plan to use their research toincrease plant biomass in trees – thus helping meet the need for renewable resources.

The study, published in The American Naturalist,compared the skull shapes of domestic dogs withthose of different species across the orderCarnivora, to which dogs belong along with cats,bears, weasels, civets and even seals and walruses.

It found that the skull shapes of domestic dogsvaried as much as those of the whole order. Italso showed that the extremes of diversity werefarther apart in domestic dogs than in the rest ofthe order. This means, for instance, that a Colliehas a skull shape that is more different from thatof a Pekingese than the skull shape of the cat isfrom that of a walrus.

Evolution is usually a slow and gradual process,but the incredible amount of diversity in domesticdogs has originated through selective breeding,particularly after the modern purebred dog breedswere established in the last 150 years. By contrast,the order Carnivora dates back at least 60 millionyears. The massive diversity in the shapes of thedogs’ skulls emphatically proves that selection has

a powerful role to play in evolution. Much of thediversity of domestic dog skulls is outside the rangeof variation in the Carnivora, and thus representsskull shapes that are entirely novel.

Author Dr Chris Klingenberg, at the Faculty of Life Sciences, says: “Domestic dogs are boldlygoing where no self respecting carnivore ever hasgone before.

“Domestic dogs don’t live in the wild so they don’thave to run after things and kill them – their foodcomes out of a tin and the toughest thing they’llever have to chew is their owner’s slippers. So theycan get away with a lot of variation that wouldaffect functions such as breathing and chewingand would therefore lead to their extinction.

“Natural selection has been relaxed and replacedwith artificial selection for various shapes thatbreeders favour.”

Seewww.flywings.org.uk

Survival of the cutest…Domestic dogs have followed their own evolutionary path, twistingDarwin’s directive ‘survival of the fittest’ to their own needs – and haveproved him right in the process, according to a new study.

Enzyme that ‘cleans’ cancer cellsScientists have discovered that an enzyme can rid cells of a genebelieved to be responsible for a wide range of cancers.

Dr Jorg Hartkamp and Dr Stefan Roberts havefound that the protease HtrA2 can “clean” cells ofthe oncogene WT1, which is found at high levels inmany leukaemias and solid cancers such as breastand lung cancer.

Their work has given drug designers a new targetwhich will allow them to develop treatments for allthese cancers in which WT1 expression is elevated.

WT1 is a well-known factor in cancer, having beendiscovered 20 years ago. It suppresses thedevelopment of Wilms’ tumour of the kidney, arare cancer that affects one in 10,000 children.

However it has a cancer causing role in other formsof the disease, particularly leukemias such as acutemyeloid leukaemia (AML) and chronic myeloidleukaemia (CML).

In addition high expression of WT1 is associatedwith a bad prognosis in AML patients, while trialsusing peptide vaccines against WT1 in patientswith lung cancer, breast cancer and leukaemiawere promising.

This latest study – published in the journalMolecular Cell and funded by the Wellcome Trust,Cancer Research UK and the Association of

International Cancer Research (AICR) – is the firstto identify the enzyme that can rid cells of WT1.

Dr Hartkamp, at the Faculty of Life Sciences, said:“We have filled in the black box of WT1. It is thisprotease that is doing the trick – it can clean cellsof WT1.”

Dr Roberts, who initiated the work at Manchesterand is now at the University at Buffalo, added:“There are great prognostic implications inleukaemias but this protease may have even moretargets. It is unlikely that a protease cleaves onlyone transcription factor such as WT1.”

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French bulldog

Wolf

and CLE41 directed the amount and direction ofcell division. Furthermore, they found over-expression of CLE41 caused a greater amount ofgrowth in a well-ordered fashion, thus increasingwood production.

The team are now growing poplar trees in thelab – to see if they fit the Arabidopsis model.They will use these results to develop a systemof increasing wood production.

See www.ls.manchester.ac.uk/research/researchgroups/cellorganisationanddynamics

Animal skulls under comparison

Business and Community Links

Major role in uk’s top science festivalThe Faculty played a major role in the Manchester Science Festival, the city’s annual celebration of science,technology and engineering. With 100,000 delegates, it is now the UK’s most popular science festival.

Its Centre for the History of Science, Technologyand Medicine (CHSTM) sponsored three public talksby high-profile speakers Thomas Dixon (‘Darwinismvs creationism: a very American conflict’), JamesMoore ( ‘Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery andHuman Origins’) and Patricia Fara (‘Science: A FourThousand Year History’).

In addition CHSTM’s Director Michael Worboyschaired an evening debate on the threat pandemicspose to society, how we are dealing with them andthe measures in place for the future.

CHSTM researcher Kat Foxhall explained hownineteenth-century surgeons experimented with

different remedies when scurvy broke outamongst prisoners, while Neil Pembertondescribed how leading nineteenth-centurycelebrity pathologist Bernard Spilsbury unravelledthe mysteries of homicide.

Researchers on the CHSTM biomedical history stallincluded Julie Anderson, who displayed a selection ofartificial limbs from different eras – and allowedyounger visitors to design their own artificial limb!Vicky Long explained 1920s and 30s innovations totransform factories into healthy and pleasant workingenvironments and allowed visitors to take vocationalaptitude tests from the era. Michael Brown displayednineteenth century surgical instruments from the

Manchester Medical School Museum and discussedhow anaesthesia and antisepsis made surgery safer.

At the Cornerhouse cinema, CHSTM lecturer DavidKirby participated in a discussion on ‘Thirst, Blood,Vampires and Science’ following a screening ofvampire film Thirst. CHSTM postgraduate EmilyHankin led a walking tour of the University and, inthe congenial setting of the Lass O’Gowrie CHSTMlecturer James Sumner led a crowded audiencethrough a light-headed stagger of scientificunderstandings of alcohol since 1600.

Seewww.chstm.manchester.ac.uk

The Wellcome Trust has given the team£160,000 to re-examine Smith’s evidence from20,000 bodies buried at Nubia, in research thatnever received the recognition it deserved.Smith, an academic at the Universities of Cairoand Manchester and UCL in the early twentiethcentury, started the study of disease in largepopulations and gathered extensive data justbefore Nubia was flooded by the building of thelow dam of Aswan. The KNH team will workwith the Natural History Museum to produce ahost of new papers and set up the website.

The Leverhulme Trust has also awarded £58,000to the KNH Centre for a study to see if healthwas related to status in ancient Egypt. PhDstudent and osteologist Iwona Kozieradzska willgather and examine evidence from extensiveexcavations at a cemetery at Sakkara.

Finally the KNH Centre hosted a successful dayschool discussing the scientific study of ancient

Egyptian mummies, which included thequestion, was the great PharaohRamesses II a true redhead?

Ramesses II - the third Egyptian pharaoh of thenineteenth dynasty - lived to the grand old age of91 and is regarded as one of Egypt's greatestpharaohs. He became King in 1279 BC, when hewas in his early 20s, and ruled for over six decadesduring which time his fame was extraordinary, itremained legendary throughout classical antiquityand today this remarkable pharaoh still holds anenduring fascination. As a builder he covered theland from the Delta to Nubia with buildings in away no ruler had ever done before. He had manywives, fathered scores of children, and declaredhimself a god early on in his reign. On his death,he was buried in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings;his body was later moved to a royal cache where itwas discovered in 1881, and is now on display inthe Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Professor Rosalie David, who lectured at the dayschool, said: “Even in death Ramesses II remains afascinating figure. In 1974, Egyptologists noticed thecondition of the mummy was deteriorating. Theydecided to fly Ramesses II's mummy to Paris forexamination - and he was issued an Egyptian passportthat listed his occupation as “King (deceased)”.

The mummy was received at Le Bourget airport,just outside Paris, with the full military honoursbefitting a king. In Paris, Ramesses' mummy wasdiagnosed and treated for a fungal infection.During the examination, scientific analysisrevealed the pharaoh's arthritis, poor circulationand appalling dental condition.”

The day school also revealed how modernscientific investigations and archaeologicalresearch is helping to reveal more about the livesof other characters from ancient Egypt -Horemkenesi, high priest of Amun at Karnak;Meresamun, a temple singer; and Asetirikhetes,the Ptolemaic mummy from 305 BC.

Professor David said: “The day school was so wellreceived last year that we decided to hold itannually. This year's agenda was just asfascinating. We are really enjoying putting the dayschools together and thinking of new insightsthat fellow enthusiasts would want to know.”

See www.knhcentre.manchester.ac.uk/

Revisiting a founding father…The KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology has won two prestigious grants, one of which will revisit thework of anthropologist Sir Grafton Elliot Smith and set up a publicly available website on his excellent butas yet overlooked work.

Michael Brown (left) gets into character

Julie Anderson (centre) showsyoungsters an artificial leg

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The conference, to be held on 11 and 12 June,will feature the creators of the popular forensicsdramas Silent Witness and Waking the Dead,Nigel McCreary and Barbara Machin respectively.Each responsible for attracting 6M viewers tothe BBC, they will discuss screening forensics atan evening event.

The international event, sponsored by the Centrefor the History of Science, Technology andMedicine (CHSTM) and the Wellcome Trust, willalso feature William Haglund, the UN’s chiefscientific advisor at mass gravesites in Rwanda,Sierra Leone and the former Yugoslavia, while

renowned US academic David Foran will cast doubton Dr Henry Crippen’s celebrated 1910 convictionfor the murder of his wife.

Bookings for the conference are being taken from1 March.

Organiser Dr Ian Burney said: “In the courtroom, innewspapers, and on our television screens, modernday forensics has never been so visible, socompelling and, in some respects, so contentious.This conference places the remarkable prominenceof forensic science and medicine in contemporaryculture in analytical and historical perspective.”

Co-organiser Dr David Kirby added: "It brings together leading scholars from history,sociology and socio-legal studies, media andcultural studies, and practitioners working withinthe diverse spaces of forensic culture - fromcrime scenes and bio-medical laboratories totelevision studios. It will enable a genuinely cross-disciplinary conversation of interest to a broad audience of academics, forensicpractitioners and the public."

To book a place or for more information seewww.chstm.manchester.ac.uk/newsandevents/conferences/forensics

The science – and art of – forensicsThe Faculty is hosting a conference on the science – and art – of Forensics.

Groundbreaking climate change research – at high schoolPupils from Manchester Academy are helping Faculty scientists in a two-year groundbreaking scientific studyto accurately measure the important impact of trees in the fight against climate change.

Drs Roland Ennos and David Armson havecalculated that a mere 10% increase in the amountof green space in built-up centres would reduceurban surface temperatures by as much as 4°C. This4°C drop in temperature, which is equivalent to theaverage predicted rise through global warming bythe 2080s, is caused by the cooling effect of wateras it evaporates into the air from leaves andvegetation through a process called transpiration.

Their study will use nine i-trees plots along OxfordRoad, each consisting of three 3m x 3m grids oftarmac, grass and a tree which are linked tomonitoring equipment that gathers information onsurface and air temperature, air quality and surfacewater run off.

And they have recruited three groups of pupils tobe responsible for downloading the data from theirplot and comparing the levels of rainwater run offand surface temperature for each of the differentsurface types. The pupils will also measure the levelof harmful pollution that is absorbed by the treesleaves (and therefore taken out of the air).

The results will provide the data needed todemonstrate the multiple benefits of greenery tocity and town environments. It is also hoped thestudy will be a useful tool to provide planners anddevelopers with data to inform future developmentsManchester so that enough green space is providedto help keep people living, working and visiting theCity cool and comfortable as the climate changes.

Dr Ennos said: “It is generally accepted that treesand greenery help to reduce surface and airtemperatures – that’s why it is always cooler tostand beneath the shade of a tree, rather than abuilding. No one has accurately measured the sizeof this effect over a sustained period and againstother types of surfaces. Our hope is that the resultsof i-trees will inform future tree planting in the cityso we can start now to counter balance theincrease in temperatures expected in the cities overthe next 20 years caused by climate change.

"Involving the pupils from Manchester Academy inthe project is really important, as they will befinding out first hand about climate change and itseffects, and making a real contribution to the studyand the future of Manchester.”

Dr Joanne Smiles, science teacher at ManchesterAcademy said: "i-trees presents our students with avaluable opportunity to contribute to real scientificresearch. Furthermore, it is crucial that we involveyoung people in processes to combat climate

change, as it is they who will pick up the baton andcontinue to find solutions".

Seewww.ls.manchester.ac.uk/research/researchgroups/computationalandevolutionarybiology

7Michael Brown (left) gets into character

Dr Roland Ennos (top left), David Armson (top right) with pupils,Tshepo Gaditswalelwe (left) and Mubariz Mujtaba (right)

News in Brief

J2797 03.10 The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL Royal Charter Number RC000797

Faculty Communications OfficerJessica Bowlertel 0161 275 5537email jessica.bowler@manchester.ac.uk

Associate Dean for CommunicationsProfessor Alan Dicksontel 0161 275 5077 email alan.dickson@manchester.ac.uk

If you have any comments or contributions for future editions of the Newsletter, please contact the Faculty of Life Sciences: Editor’s Note

Faculty scientists have discovered exactly how plantsobtain energy from sunlight through chlorophyllproduction in a study that helps to explain thedesign and activity of all enzymes.

Professor Nigel Scrutton and his team have not only gained a more detailed understanding of the production of the most abundant and lifesustaining chemical on Earth, they also expect toapply their findings to all enzymes thus allowingthe design of novel clinical and industrial processes.

The study, published in the Journal of BiologicalChemistry (JBC), also takes in quantum tunnelling, a newly discovered enzyme mechanism where they use energy to blast through rather than climb a chemical reaction.

See www.ls.manchester.ac.uk/research/researchgroups/structuralandfunctionalsystems/

New light on chlorophyll

Wonder weedsPlants that cope better with changes in theenvironment – giving greater crop yields in theface of global warming – could be developedfollowing a study into the weeds in the cracksin pavements.

Dr Giles Johnson and his team at the Faculty ofLife Sciences have identified a protein thathelps plants ‘track’ the environment andincrease their capacity to photosynthesise(capturing light energy through the leaveswhich enables them to grow). This protein isproduced according to the expression of aparticular gene.

Some plants, including important crops, areless able to track their environment and arethus unable to cope with environmentalchanges. But if the team is able to help plantsto respond to changes in their environment bytraditionally breeding or genetically modifyingthem, crop yields could be increased, especiallyin vulnerable land.

Dr Johnson – whose study used thale cress, acommon weed that is in the same family ascabbage and oil seed rape and was publishedin Plant Physiology – said: “Over the last 200years, industrial society has transformed theatmosphere of our planet, increasing CO2concentration by 50%. Climates are becomingwarmer but, crucially, more unstable withincreasing frequencies of extreme weatherevents such as droughts and heat waves – it isthis variability of climate that poses mostthreat to agriculture. Even short periods ofextreme weather can trigger crop failure.

“If we wish to secure food production, weurgently need to breed plants with anincreased ability to tolerate change in theirenvironment.”

See www.ls.manchester.ac.uk/research/researchgroups/structuralandfunctionalsystems

Dr Anne-Marie Buckle sadly and unexpectedly losther battle with cancer over the New Year.

Anne-Marie came to UMIST in 1995 having beenhead-hunted from SyStemix Inc., Palo Alto, to jointhe newly established Leukemia Research FundCellular Development Unit led by Tony Whetton.While working in California under the leadership ofthe world famous stem cell biologist Irv Weissman,she was a member of the original team that firstisolated and characterised human haematopoieticstem cells. Following this ground-breaking work,the move to UMIST allowed her to develop herinterests in understanding development of thehuman haematopoietic stem cell lineage.

While working in UMIST and subsequently TheUniversity of Manchester, she developed methodsto establish haematopoietic stem cell lines fromcord blood and study their differentiation in vitro.She explored the behaviour of developmentallyimportant signalling pathways, in particular theNotch pathways, in the control of stem celldifferentiation and lineage commitment. This ledAnne-Marie to forge a number of exciting multi-disciplinary collaborations within the ManchesterInterdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB). Working with PeterFielden and Nick Goddard, her work established anexperimental strategy for understanding the steps instem cell development by mimicking the micro-niche in which stem cell maturation occurs in situ.

Anne-Marie’s approach to science was always one ofhard work, mixed with refreshing modesty andopenness. But perhaps more than anything, it was

her commitment and enthusiasm that madeworking with her such a joy. These aspects of herpersonality also defined her affection fordisseminating knowledge to students of all ages.With Drs Jaleel Miyan and Elaine Spooncer, shewon a curriculum innovation award from theManchester Enterprise in Higher Education Centrefor the introduction of new problem-basedteaching methods in the UMIST molecular cellbiology (or 'Biological Science') degree programme.She was exceptionally popular with students andknew how to connect with them, excite them, andpropel them along the learning path.

These same skills made her a highly regarded,respected and valued research group leader,advisor, mentor and colleague. Anne-Marie was afull participant in the MIB ethos and was alsowell-known across campus, organising the verypopular Stem Cell seminar series and manyWomen Into Science, Engineering andConstruction (WISE) events. She was also involvedin many events to engage school children with arange of science activities, such as a Royal Societyfunded week of science in Hayfield.

To commemorate Anne-Marie’s commitment andenthusiasm for both teaching and research theFaculty of Life Sciences has established the'Anne-Marie Buckle Memorial Prize' that will beawarded for the best final year student project inthe general area of Cell and Molecular Biology.

The University sends its sincere condolences to hertwo children, Chris and Caity, and husband Andy.

Obituary: Dr Anne-Marie Buckle

New therapy hopeScientists have revealed how a mutant gene thatcauses a connective tissue disease resulting indwarfism does so by significantly affecting theinside of cells – opening up new therapy strategiesthat involve drugs already under development.

In disorders such as many forms of dwarfisms orbrittle bone disease, mutations in genes forextracellular matrix proteins were thought to exert

their pathogenic effects because of resultingdefects in extracellular matrix. But Dr Mike Briggs,Professor Ray Boot-Handford and their team in theWellcome Trust Centre for Cell-Matrix Researchhave shown in a series of recent papers that theyalso have significant effects inside the cell.

See www.ls.manchester.ac.uk/research/researchgroups/cellmatrixresearch

Anne-Marie withher daughter Caity

Anne-Marie enthusesschoolchildren