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Listing for biochemistry

Lionel Hill My lab carries out chemical analysis for a large institute working on plants and microbes. We routinely deal with whatever the science throws up: antibiotics, nutritionally important chemicals and flavours, organic synthesis products, and (once) the explosive, TNT. It's varied.

Mike Webb I'm looking at the way that bacteria and algae use pieces of RNA called 'riboswitches' to regulate how they make chemicals. Riboswitches are a recent (2002) addition to the panoply of ways in which cells regulate themselves - they bind small molecules and thereby prevent production of proteins that would otherwise produce those same small molecules. Previously I worked on the metabolic pathway that makes vitamin B5 in bacteria, and the pathway that makes half the building-blocks of DNA, purines, in cancerous cells.

Mark Lorch

My research is concerned with a group of molecules called 'Membrane protein'. These proteins act as the gate keepers in all living cells. They transport nutrients, waste and information in and out of cells and allow cells to communicate with each other. They are also partly responsible for antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

Emma Welsh

I am currently writing systmeatic reviews of asthma clinical trials for the Cochrane collaboration. My background is a bit different though. For my PhD I used commercially-available chemicals to make a painkilling molecule that is found in blue-green algae. Then I went on to work on synthesising anti-cancer drugs -- and learning about the complexities of how drugs behave in the body. I spent a few months as a freelance editor, writer and scientific collaborator and still do this a bit on the side of my day job. I think that lots of the flashy science grabbing headlines in the papers is incredibly interesting and mind-blowing and want to help people understand the ideas and basic science behind those stories which are really exciting and sometimes cast aside as "too difficult and boring".

D. Guymer I am interested in how bacteria grow and obtain energy in the absence of oxygen and the different chemical compounds that these bacteria use in the absence of molecular oxygen.