Latest research from Birkbeck Biological Sciences researchers

BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online - is a database of research papers deposited by Birkbeck researchers and academics. Here are the papers, available in full text, that have been uploaded by members of staff from the department of Biological Sciences this year.
Click on the links to see the full papers, but bear in mind that some of these may be the author manuscripts, not the final published versions. You will need your ITS account to log in.

You can also follow BIRON on Twitter to get the latest additions: https://twitter.com/BIROnbbk

• O’Reilly, A.O. and Cole, Ambrose R. and Lopes, J.L.S. and Lampert, A. and Wallace, Bonnie A. (2014) Chaperone-mediated native folding of a β-scorpion toxin in the periplasm of E.coli. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - General Subjects 1840 (1), pp. 10-15. ISSN 0304-4165. (In Press)
• Waudby, Christopher A. and Launay, H. and Cabrita, L.D. and Christodoulou, John (2013) Protein folding on the ribosome studied using NMR spectroscopy. Progress in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy 74 , pp. 57-75. ISSN 0079-6565.
• Bagneris, Claire and DeCaen, P.G. and Hall, B.A. and Naylor, Claire E. and Clapham, D.E. and Kay, C.W.M. and Wallace, Bonnie A. (2013) Role of the C-terminal domain in the structure and function of tetrameric sodium channels. Nature Communications 4 , 2465. ISSN 2041-1723.
• Redzej, Adam and Ilangovan, Aravindan and Lang, S. and Gruber, C.J. and Topf, Maya and Zangger, K. and Zechner, E.L. and Waksman, Gabriel (2013) Structure of a translocation signal domain mediating conjugative transfer by Type IV secretion systems. Molecular Microbiology 89 (2), pp. 324-333. ISSN 0950-382X.
• Woollett, Benjamin and Whitmore, Lee and Janes, R.W. and Wallace, Bonnie A. (2013) ValiDichro: a website for validating and quality control of protein circular dichroism spectra. Nucleic Acids Research 41 (W1), W417-W421. ISSN 0305-1048.
• Lopes, J.L.S. and Orcia, D. and Araujo, A.P.U. and DeMarco, R. and Wallace, Bonnie A. (2013) Folding factors and partners for the intrinsically disordered protein Micro-Exon Gene 14 (MEG-14). Biophysical Journal 104 (11), pp. 2512-2520. ISSN 0006-3495.
• Hawksworth, David L. and McNeill, J. and de Beer, Z.W. and Wingfield, M.J. (2013) Names of fungal species with the same epithet applied to different morphs: how to treat them. IMA Fungus 4 (1), pp. 53-56. ISSN 2210-6340.
• Motta, A. and Huyet, Jessica and Naylor, Claire E. and Savva, Christos G. and Gibert, M. and Popoff, M.R. and Basak, Ajit K. (2013) Structural insights into Clostridium perfringens delta toxin pore formation. PLoS ONE 8 (6), e66673. ISSN 1932-6203.
• Miles, Andrew J. and Fedosova, N.U. and Hoffmann, S.V. and Wallace, Bonnie A. and Esmann, M. (2013) Stabilisation of Na,K-ATPase structure by the cardiotonic steroid ouabain. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 435 (2), pp. 300-305. ISSN 0006-291X.
• Bokori-Brown, M. and Kokkinidou, M.C. and Savva, Christos G. and Fernandes da Costa, S.P. and Naylor, Claire E. and Cole, Ambrose R. and Moss, David S. and Basak, Ajit K. and Titball, R.W. (2013) Clostridium perfringensepsilon toxin H149A mutant as a platform for receptor binding studies. Protein Science 22 (5), pp. 650-659. ISSN 0961-8368.
• Riou, P. and Kjær, S. and Garg, R. and Purkiss, Andrew G. and George, R. and Cain, R.J. and Bineva, G. and Reymond, N. and McColl, B. and Thompson, A.J. and O’Reilly, N. and McDonald, Neil Q. and Parker, P.J. and Ridley, A.J. (2013) 14-3-3 Proteins Interact with a Hybrid Prenyl-Phosphorylation Motif to Inhibit G Proteins. Cell 153 (3), pp. 640-653. ISSN 0092-8674.
• Rivera-Calzada, A. and Fronzes, Remi and Savva, Christos G. and Chandran, Vidya and Lian, Pei W. and Laeremans, T. and Pardon, E. and Steyaert, J. and Remaut, Han and Waksman, Gabriel and Orlova, Elena V. (2013) Structure of a bacterial type IV secretion core complex at subnanometre resolution. The EMBO Journal 32 (8), pp. 1195-1204. ISSN 1460-4189.
• Ulmschneider, Martin B. and Bagneris, Claire and McCusker, Emily C. and DeCaen, P.G. and Delling, M. and Clapham, D.E. and Ulmschneider, J.P. and Wallace, Bonnie A. (2013) Molecular dynamics of ion transport through the open conformation of a bacterial voltage-gated sodium channel. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110 (16), pp. 6364-6369. ISSN 0027-8424.
• Thompson, Katherine C. and Jones, S.H. and Rennie, A.R. and King, M.D. and Ward, A.D. and Hughes, Brian R. and Lucas, C.O.M. and Campbell, R.A. and Hughes, A.V. (2013) Degradation and rearrangement of a lung surfactant lipid at the air–water interface during exposure to the pollutant gas ozone. Langmuir 29 (14), pp. 4594-4602. ISSN 0743-7463.
• Tarr, Sarah J. and Cryar, Adam and Thalassinos, Konstantinos and Haldar, K. and Osborne, Andrew R. (2013) The C-terminal portion of the cleaved HT motif is necessary and sufficient to mediate export of proteins from the malaria parasite into its host cell. Molecular Microbiology 87 (4), pp. 835-850. ISSN 0950-382X.
• Atherton, Joseph and Houdusse, A. and Moores, Carolyn A. (2013) MAPping out distribution routes for kinesin couriers. Biology of the Cell , ISSN 0248-4900. (In Press)
• Guzman, Juan D. and Evangelopoulos, Dimitrios and Gupta, Antima and Birchall, K. and Mwaigwisya, S. and Saxty, B. and McHugh, T.D. and Gibbons, S. and Malkinson, J. and Bhakta, Sanjib (2013) Antitubercular specific activity of ibuprofen and the other 2-arylpropanoic acids using the HT-SPOTi whole-cell phenotypic assay. BMJ Open 3 (6), e002672. ISSN 2044-6055.
• Lang, Peter F. and Smith, Barry C. (2013) Methods of calculating ionization energies of multielectron (five or more) isoelectronic atomic ions. The Scientific World Journal 2013 , pp. 1-10. ISSN 1537-744X.
• Limon, G. and Lewis, Elisa G. and Chang, Y.-M. and Ruiz, H. and Balanza, M.E. and Guitian, J. (2013) Using mixed methods to investigate factors influencing reporting of livestock diseases: a case study among smallholders in Bolivia. Preventive Veterinary Medicine , ISSN 0167-5877. (In Press)
• Munshi, Tulika and Gupta, Antima and Evangelopoulos, Dimitrios and Guzman, Juan D. and Gibbons, S. and Keep, Nicholas H. and Bhakta, Sanjib (2013) Characterisation of ATP-Dependent Mur Ligases Involved in the Biogenesis of Cell Wall Peptidoglycan in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. PLoS One 8 (3), e60143. ISSN 1932-6203.
• Temussi, P.A. and Waudby, Christopher A. and Camilloni, C. and Fitzpatrick, A.W.P. and Cabrita, L.D. and Dobson, C.M. and Vendruscolo, M. and Christodoulou, John (2013) In-cell NMR characterization of the secondary structure populations of a disordered conformation of α-Synuclein within E. coli cells. PLoS ONE 8 (8), e72286. ISSN 1932-6203.

Want to try your hand at science writing? New competition.

Access to Understanding is a science-writing competition, run by Europe PubMedCentral and the British Library, for PhD students and early career post-doctoral researchers (max. 6 years experience) who have an interest in communicating science to the public. Prizes include an iPad and Amazon vouchers. More details at the link below, but hurry, it closes on the 10th December.

http://europepmc.org/ScienceWritingCompetition

Biome - keep up to date with a new online magazine

 

Check out Biome - a new online magazine showcasing recent medical and biological research.

 

"Biome is an online magazine that will provide biologists, medical researchers and clinicians with the latest research topics, discussions and community news from the entire spectrum of medicine and biology. Published by BioMed Central, Biome will regularly report on specially significant research articles, reviews and commentaries that appear daily in BioMed Central’s open access journals, all of which are fully peer reviewed. Biome brings together a selection of new insights from across the entire spectrum of biology and medicine."

See the latest articles here http://www.biomedcentral.com/biome/. You can also sign up to receive monthly highlights.

Useful web sites for creating scientific posters

For those of you currently creating posters, here are some useful websites with tips on layout and tools you can use to create interesting posters. I hope you find them useful. Please let me know of any other sites that you have found useful for this and I'll add them below.

• http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/posterdesign
• http://as.ua.edu/undergraduateresearch/presenting-your-work/making-posters/
• http://www.cns.cornell.edu/documents/ScientificPosters.pdf
• http://www.ncsu.edu/project/posters/
• http://www.utexas.edu/ugs/our/poster
• http://poly.libguides.com/posters

New study into cell replication in the Department of Biological Sciences

Dr Carolyn Moores, Reader in Structural Biology, has received a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) grant worth over £350,000 over three years for investigations into how cell replication is controlled and how it might be blocked. See more on this story on the Birkbeck news pages

See Carolyn's Researcher ID profile here http://www.researcherid.com/rid/A-4942-2010
Want to join Researcher ID? Sign up for free here http://www.researcherid.com/

View some of Carolyn's papers via the Birkbeck eLibrary (you will need your Birkbeck IT account to log in):

• New insights into genotype–phenotype correlations for the doublecortin-related lissencephaly spectrum
• The Structural Basis of Force Generation by the Mitotic Motor Kinesin-5
• Dynein: A Force (Generation Mechanism) to Be Reckoned with
• Molecular Basis for Specific Regulation of Neuronal Kinesin-3 Motors by Doublecortin Family Proteins
• Loop L5 Acts as a Conformational Latch in the Mitotic Kinesin Eg5

 

Nature PastCasts

The Nature PastCast is a podcast series telling the stories behind some of the biggest papers in Nature's archive. Each month for a year, the PastCast will explore Nature's back catalogue, setting in context key moments in the history of science – and rooting out some of the quirkier reports from the journal – with the help of scientists and historians.

Click on the links below to access each episode:

October 1993: Could there be life on other planets?
September 1963: Plate Tectonics
August 1975: Monoclonal antibodies: from basic science to blockbuster medicine
July 1942: WW2 Radar Design
June 1876: The arrival of the first Gorilla in Europe
May 1985: The discovery of a hole in the ozone layer
April 1953: The structure of DNA

 

Welcome to new science students

 

Welcome to all new Birkbeck science students. I hope to see you all at induction events over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime if you would like to find out more about what the Library offers, there are lots of ways to do that:

• Watch our Library video
• Download our Welcome guide
• Come on a Library tour or try our QR code tour
• Try our Library and Information Skills Moodle module
• Sign up for a Saturday workshop
• Take a look at the guide to Library resources for your subject

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us http://www.bbk.ac.uk/lib/contact/