For the first time, an interdisciplinary team of researchers has revealed intricate 3D detail of how the structure of a malfunctioning protein, hIAPP, evolves over time. Scientists used Cryo-Electron Microscopy (cryoEM) – a high resolution imaging technique - to determine the structures of the hIAPP amyloid fibrils present at three distinct points of growth; an...
Yoselin Benitez-Alfonso, from the School of Biology, is celebrating becoming the second person from Leeds to earn a senior promotion after joining the ground-breaking 100 Black Women Professors NOW! programme. The pioneering systemic change programme aims to break down barriers by increasing the number of Black women in the academic pipeline. When it was launched in...
Professor Andrew Macdonald, Pro Dean for Research and Innovation, talks to Kidney Matters about how research at University of Leeds is supporting the development of new treatments for BK virus. BK virus is a common virus that infects most people by the age of about 10 years. A healthy immune system keeps the virus in...
Congratulations to Mike who has been promoted to Professor of Biological Chemistry.
Two researchers in the Faculty of Biological Sciences, Dr Juan Fontana and Professor Frank Sobott, are to receive a share of £12 million to pursue visionary bioscience research. The projects, which have been funded by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) will explore early-stage ideas at the frontiers of bioscience and will use state...
For the first time, scientists have witnessed new molecular behaviour in proteins that protect us from cancer. Scientists in the have identified new features of BRCA1–BARD1, a group of proteins that play a critical role in repairing damaged DNA. Using ground-breaking imaging techniques, thanks to the state-of-the-art equipment at the Astbury and Bragg centres in...
Researchers at the University of Leeds have developed a new diagnostic approach that can quickly identify how a patient is responding to antibody medication. The technology, which uses special sensors called enzyme switch sensors, can detect the amount of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (TmAb) that are present in a patient’s system. TmAbs are medicines that are...
Dr Grace Roberts, researcher in the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology, writes for The Conversation. A growing number of people living in the UK are going abroad to have tattoos, piercings and cosmetic surgeries. Any procedure, no matter where it’s performed, can carry the risk of injury and infection. But people heading abroad for cosmetic procedures...
Researchers from the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology have joined a consortium of academics and industry partners as part of a new 9.7MЄ study. The EU-funded project, Fragment-Screen, which is being led by Instruct-ERIC, aims to develop innovative tools that could help to advance new drugs using the approach of fragment-based drug discovery. A team...
The aggregation of β2-microglobulin (β2m) into amyloid fibrils is associated with human disease, but subtly different variants of β2m are associated with diseases with distinct pathologies. Astbury researchers at the University of Leeds have used cryoEM to determine the structures of fibrils formed from three different variants under identical conditions in vitro. The research, from...