Biological Sciences, School of
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Cytological and genetical studies on Puccinia striiformis westend
(The University of Edinburgh, 1978)Cytological and genetical studies were carried out on the possible mechanism(s) involved in the production of new physiologic races of the yellow rust pathogen, Puccinia striiformis. The size and structure of dividing ... -
Synthetic biology approach to monitoring transient interactions between cancer and immune cells
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-03-28)Immune cells play an important role in tumour growth and progression, as well as establishment at metastatic sites. Although inherently, immune system is designed to locate, target and eliminate malignant cells, ... -
Mechanical stress priming to enhance crop resilience
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-03-20)Exposure to mechanical stress alters the growth and development of plants, and can prime them to be resistant to subsequent environmental stress. The application of mechanical stress therefore has the potential to improve ... -
Buffering and trophic mismatch in spring-feeding forest caterpillars
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-03-17)Across temperate environments, climate warming is leading to a general advancement of spring phenology in a wide range of ecologically and taxonomically diverse species. For taxa that depend on interactions with other ... -
Cellulose as a component of plant cell walls and as a food additive in confectioner
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-02-15)A healthy diet is rich in dietary fibre (largely indigestible polysaccharides, most of which derive from plant cell walls). Cellulose is one of the main components of plant cell walls and a major contributor to human dietary ... -
Use of AI for the development of two new early drug discovery techniques: deep and transfer learning for LogP prediction and dimensionality reduction for sequence-based virtual screening
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-02-10)Prediction of small molecule physiochemical properties and their biological targets is extremely valuable in the effort to reduce costs and attrition rates within drug discovery. In-silico techniques are now routinely ... -
Developing novel optogenetic tools in Caenorhabditis elegans
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-02-14)Proteins are biopolymers constructed from 20 canonical amino acids which, while limited in number, work together to carry out an extensive variety of functions essential to life. Genetic code expansion allows for the ... -
Transcriptomic profiling of glia in Huntington's disease
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-02-10)Huntington’s disease (HD) is a severely debilitating, autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease with a fatal outcome. There is accumulating evidence of a prominent role of glia in the pathology of HD, and we investigated ... -
Evolutionary ecology of parasite strategies for within-host survival
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-02-08)Plasmodium parasites, the causal agents of malaria, engage in complex interactions with their hosts, however despite decades of research much of their life cycle remains unexplored. A deeper understanding of the strategies ... -
Computational comparative genomics in cyanobacteria
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-02-07)Cyanobacteria are an ancient clade of photosynthetic prokaryotes, varying in morphology, physiology, biochemistry and habitat. They evolve by typical prokaryotic mechanisms including horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Some ... -
Molecular dissection of the spindle assembly checkpoint signalling in Cryptococcus neoformans
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-02-02)Cryptococcosis is a severe fungal infection caused by an opportunistic fungal pathogen, Cryptococcus neoformans which has been medically significant for more than half of the last century. This yeast displays noticeable ... -
Chemical biotechnology strategies for adipic acid synthesis
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-25)Adipic acid is one of the most widely-used and valuable platform chemicals. However, industrial adipic acid synthesis is environmentally damaging, as it produces greenhouse gas and relies on non-renewable petrochemical ... -
Understanding the physiological basis of post-flowering nitrogen (N) dynamics in spring barley to improve nitrogen use efficiency (NUE)
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-24)Identifying ways to improve nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in cereal production is a major international research priority. It has been estimated that globally only around 40% of N from fertilizer is recovered in the grain ... -
Thioredoxins enable selective and reversible redox signalling in plants
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-20)Accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in eukaryotic cells is associated with several biological processes, including environmental stress responses. ROS levels are usually maintained at low levels by an extensive ... -
Investigating the role SUMO plays in heterochromatin formation in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-17)In eukaryotic cells, DNA is organized by histones and associated proteins into a complex that is called chromatin. The fundamental subunit of chromatin is the nucleosome that is composed of eight histone proteins and a ... -
Electrophysiological functions of microbes
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-07-06)Akin to neurons, all microbes maintain an electric potential (a.k.a. membrane voltage) across their membranes. The exact function and generation mechanism of microbial membrane voltage remains elusive. Microbes also maintain ... -
Role of TEX15 in piRNA-directed de novo DNA methylation in the developing male germline
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-12)The PIWI-interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway instructs DNA methylation of young active transposable elements (TEs) in the male germline via the PIWI protein MIWI2. In the proposed model MIWI2 is recruited to transcriptionally ... -
Post-transcriptional regulation of the circadian clock in Ostreococcus tauri
(The University of Edinburgh, 2023-01-11)The cellular landscape changes dramatically over the course of a 24 h day. The proteome responds directly to daily environmental cycles and is additionally regulated by the circadian clock. Historically, models of the ... -
P1 phagemid-based delivery of Cas9 antimicrobial into Shigella flexneri
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-12-22)A bacteriophage P1 phagemid system allowed efficient packaging of a DNA-sequence specific, Cas9 antimicrobial into transducing particles, which could be used to infect and kill pathogenic bacteria, such as Shigella ... -
Laplace transform in population genetics: from theory to efficient algorithms
(The University of Edinburgh, 2022-12-06)Extracting information on the selective and demographic past of populations contained in samples of genome sequences requires a description of the distribution of the underlying genealogies. Using the Laplace transform, ...
