For ten years, the Royal Society-Pfizer Awards have been recognising outstanding African Scientists. For the first time this year, on the 19th October, there were two awardees. The advanced award was presented to Prof Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum, Institut National de Recherche Biomedicale (Democratic Republic of Congo), in recognition…
Jumped on to the Eurostar to Paris on the 7th October and visited the https://research.pasteur.fr/en/ on the 8th October to give a seminar (‘Decoding toxin-parasite interactions in Trypanosomatids’). Thanks to Philippe Bastin and Gerald Späth for hosting (and for treating me to some a…
The 20th and 24th November saw me talk about microbes to two year 6 classes at Kingsgate Primary School in West Hampstead. They were a fantastically enthusiastic group with loads of great questions, so much so that two 30 minute presentations ended up taking almost an hour and a half…
20th October was spent at University College London (just up the road!) presenting data from our various T. brucei RNAi library screens – something a bit diferent for all the virologists who work in the Division of Infection & Immunity at UCL! Dr Richard Milne and Prof Greg Towers hosted, and…
On 25th and 26th June, Matt Rogers and I hosted a group of seven year 12 students from Dulwich College at LSHTM for an intense two days of lab work, talks and tours – ‘from molecules to cells to insects’. The idea was to give them a taste of what scientific…
I joined STEMnet back in March, becoming a STEM ambassador, which all sounds rather grand, but basically involves engaging school children and their teachers in the application of science. I did a talk to a group of year 7s back in November 2013, enjoyed the experience and thought I should…
28th May was spent at the University of York presenting data from our various T. brucei RNAi library screens. It was nice to get out of London and to meet up with Pegine Walrad, hear about her developing lab, and meet some of the other people doing great work on…
Cathepsin-L can resist lysis by human serum in Trypanosoma brucei brucei.
PLoS Pathogens 10: e1004130
Featured at: LSHTM, Wellcome Trust
See also: commentary in Microbial Cell 1:270-2
Most African trypanosomes, including the veterinary species Trypanosoma brucei brucei and T. congolense (causative agents of the wasting disease nagana…
Just got back from a couple of days in Wurzburg, Germany. Nicolai Siegel invited me to talk on the Microbiology Colloquium (at the Institute for Molecular Infection Biology) – on 29th April I presented our latest data on the characterisation of trypanosome factors responsible for drug and human serum efficacy.
The…
Some people get very exercised by accession numbers – the unique identifiers associated with genes and proteins.
When publishing results in a paper it’s accepted, and indeed rightly mandated by scientific publishers, that all associated accession numbers should be declared, so enabling follow-up analyses by other groups.
Should the…
