Please join us for a wine reception after the seminar.
From Digital to Global: Inter-disciplinary research for malaria eradication at Imperial
Professor Jacob Baum, Cell Biology and Infectious Diseases, Life Sciences Department
Almost half a million children still die from malaria disease each year. Whilst there has been decades of success in slowly reducing the total burden of death and disease, and even talk of an eventual global eradication of malaria, in 2017 progress stalled. At this juncture, faced with a rising tide of resistance to insecticides by the mosquito and resistance to front line antimalarial drugs by the parasite (the causes of disease), world health authorities are calling out for science innovation in the fight against malaria; new technologies, approaches and ideas are desperately needed to make eradication an achievable goal. At Imperial College London we have one of the largest, most inter-disciplinary communities of researchers working on malaria. In 2017 we launched a College-wide Network of Excellence in Malaria, spanning all four College Faculties, charged with bringing innovation and scientific excellence to the malaria eradication agenda. In this talk, I will highlight the breadth of expertise seen across the Imperial Malaria Network, as well as highlighting some specific examples of inter-disciplinary science that is aimed at returning us to a path that eventually rids humanity of one of its oldest infectious diseases.
Molecular machines that can sense and respond to their environment
James Hindley, Phd Student, Chemistry Department
Pore-formation is ubiquitous in nature and underpins a variety of key biological functions such as cell signalling and homeostasis. My research aims to exploit the exciting potential this phenomenon affords for on-demand release or mixing of different molecular species through the development of lipid based biomolecular machines that respond to different stimuli. One design strategy exploits membrane mediated protein-protein communication enabling protein channels to open in response to local increases in enzyme (phospholipase) concentration. A second approach exploits light-responsive functional groups present in the membrane to generate nanopores under irradiation with ultraviolet light. This technology framework will underpin applications ranging from controlled smart drug delivery and biocatalysis through to the bottom-up construction of synthetic cells.
Mapping agrochemical distributions using chlorophyll fluorescence lifetime
Elizabeth Noble, PhD Student, Physics Department
Visualizing the distribution and uptake of chemicals and understanding their mode of action is very crucial in the development of new agrochemicals. Current techniques employed in the screening process for more efficient Active Ingredients and formulations, based on solvent extraction or cell culture analysis, can provide highly specific chemical information but are destructive and time consuming. Hence there is a need for a non-invasive, high resolution and label free technique that can be employed for studying the real-time distribution of agrochemicals in live plants. We explore the potential of fluorescence lifetime based techniques to this extent. The changes in intrinsic chlorophyll fluorescence of plants is used as an indirect read-out of the agrochemical presence at three different scales, utilising multiphoton-excited fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM)(cellular), wide-field single-photon excited macroscopic FLIM (whole leaf) and single point fluorescence lifetime measurements via a fibre-optic probe (1 mm2). The latter instrumentation, originally designed for label-free biomedical applications, is portable and can be deployed outside the laboratory. We demonstrate that we can detect and map the local impact of a photosystem II inhibitor on living plant leaves with spatial and temporal resolution. Thus this indirect readout could provide a portable system for monitoring the distribution of herbicides in growing plants.