Newsround - 2022 and 2023 so far...
Website updates have been few and far between, but that doesn’t mean the news has stopped! Time for a round-up…
Huge congratulations to Dave for his paper in Journal of Clinical Investigation. A role for the gut microbiota in multiple sclerosis? https://www.jci.org/articles/view/163239
Huge congratulations also to Diana for winning the Korenchevsky Prize at the BSRA summer 22 meeting at the University of Canterbury, Kent. The Korenchevsky Prize is awarded for the best early career talk, and the prize itself was a trip to the American Aging Association AGE 23 meeting. See the full post for full details https://www.dobson-lab.com/news/diana-am
Rita, lab chief comms officer, gave a fantastic, fun and funny talk at Pint of Science 23. See full post here https://www.dobson-lab.com/news/rita-pint-of-science-23
Dave and Adam had a fun trip to Dresden in September 22. We joined a 2-day symposium at T.U. Dresden, with colleagues from across Europe, discussing the biology of lipids, metabolism, and thermal adaptation. Great science, a great trip, and a surprisingly lengthy chat about kebabs…
We welcomed MRes Biomedical Science students Atharv Kapoor (2023) and Miriam Wood (2022), who joined the lab for projects on microbial regulation of longevity. We also welcomed MSc Bioinformatics students Louise Mitchell-Knight (2023) and Alex Dimokov (2022), who shook good stuff out of metabolomics and transcriptomics data.
Publication - Adam coauthored a paper in Nature Ageing with Nazif Alic’s lab, characterising mechanisms of epigenetic programming of longevity by FOXO, and showing a role for chromatin remodelling and Xbp1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7614430/
Adam also wrote a theory piece with Mirre Simons, discussing the importance of density and dose for understanding impacts of nutrition on ageing. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568163723000855
We also have a number of pre-prints from the lab on Biorxiv, detailing unappreciated experimental variables that interact with the microbiome to determine triglycerides (led by Dave https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.30.526386v1); correspondence between the microbiota and transcriptome in the gut of wild flies (led by former MSc student Frances Llanwarne https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.24.538093v1); and that we possibly can’t understand what dietary changes will do until we understand mitochondria (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.07.434274v2)
The biggest reason why the website has been lying fallow is that we’ve been busy moving and rebuilding our lab. We have moved one whole floor downstairs in the same building, and set up our bespoke fly lab with new insectaries, including a specialised facility for axenic and gnotobiotic flies. We’re still snagging, full announcement when finished.
Huge welcome to Nathan Woodling, who has joined the School of Molecular Biosciences as a Lecturer. We are super happy to be sharing lab space with Nathan, sharing lab meetings and expertise, and collaborating on exciting new stuff.
We’ve had a lot of fun networking with the section of Cell and Neurobiology at the University of Copenhagen, especially the labs of Kenneth Halberg, Kim Rewitz, Ditte Andersen and Julien Colombani. We are grateful for BBSRC funds which allowed reciprocal training visits and exchanges, with a really fun symposium - 20 friends from Copenhagen and 30 from all the different fly labs in Glasgow.
We have also welcomed a number of other guests who joined the lab for research visits. Dr Colin McClure, from Queens University Belfast, visited us and the Woodling lab for two weeks in Feb 23, for some experiments on feeding and tissue-specific transcriptome profiling. We also welcomed Christin Froschauer and Suse Broschk from TU Dresden, who joined to support in some big dissection and lifespan projects. Thanks Suse and Christin!
We had the pleasure of welcoming Prof Dame Linda Partridge for a seminar to the School of Molecular Biosciences in April 23. Linda gave a characteristically excellent talk about how to repurpose drugs by understanding the conserved biology of ageing.
Socials - we have enjoyed ice skating, BBQing, and more than one good meal out.
Phew. I will now aim to be a little better at keeping the news up to date. ..