News

MRC PPU Reagents and Services are delighted to announce the official launch of our new custom sheep Polyclonal Antibody Production Service.

We have been producing antibodies for over 25 years and during this time period have raised in excess of 2500 different sheep polyclonal antibodies, which have been critical to the research publications generated by MRC PPU.

With the launch of this service we are now able to share our expertise with academics and pharmaceutical scientists from around the world.

Please visit our website to find out more - https://antibodies.mrc.ac.uk

Congratulation to Beatrice Filippi for being awarded a very prestigious MRC Career Development Fellowship (£1.4m) to support her research for the next 5 years to investigate how an area of the brain called Dorsal Vagal Complex (DVC) senses insulin and controls glucose metabolism and feeding behavior in animals.

About 10 years ago, the discovery of the Linear Ubiquitin Assembly Complex (LUBAC) revolutionized our understanding of how the master transcription factor NF-kB was activated.  LUBAC a complex of the three proteins, HOIP, HOIL-1 and Sharpin, produces unique “linear” ubiquitin chains in which ubiquitins are joined to each other by peptide bonds. …more

David Nicolls, a Principal Investigator at the University of Dundee from 1976 until 2000, has been elected  a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) for the ground breaking research that he carried out at Dundee over this period.

How are nerve cells influenced by immune cells ? This was a central question addressed recently at a neuroimmunology workshop held at the School of Life Sciences in Dundee.

Hannah Tovell an Alessi lab PhD student working closely with the Ciulli lab has published an improved HaloPROTAC method to induce post–translational knockdown of endogenous proteins. 

This approach makes use of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology to introduce a Halo tag onto the N or C terminus of any desired target protein that can then be targeted for degradation by a HaloPROTAC probe (see Figure). 

The 2nd Dundee Edinburgh Parkinson’s Research Initiative Public Event organized by Dr Esther Sammler at the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh on March 22, 2019 was a great success.

Highlight of the Public Event was the panel discussion hosted and chaired by John Minhinick, Fife Branch of Parkinson’s UK and committee member of the Dundee Parkinson's Research Interest Group, on eight themes important to people affected by Parkinson’s disease:

1. Why did I get Parkinson’s?

The 2nd Dundee-Edinburgh Parkinson’s Research Initiative Symposium at the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh on March 22, 2019 was a great success. Organized by Dr Esther Sammler, the event attracted over 90 attendees and a line-up of 15 speakers who gave us a taste of the diverse and rich landscape of basic and clinical Parkinson’s disease research in Scotland. …more

Professor Sir Philip Cohen is recently returned from a 10-day visit to India where, as a guest of the British Council, he gave 6 lectures to audiences in Kolkata, Guwahati, and Mumbai. During his free weekend, Philip took a 5-hour taxi ride from Guwahati - in the State of Assam, in North East India - passing many famous tea plantations (called tea gardens in Assam) to the Kaziranga National Park, where he went on safari by elephant at dawn. The elephant driver is carrying a rifle in case of attack by tigers, or charging rhino or water buffalo. 

This was Philip's second ride on an elephant, the first having been at London Zoo, 61 years ago.