This week we welcomed Dr Ernesto Saiz to the environmental team – you can see his bio here – Meet the Academic Team – TU Earth and Environment (tees.ac.uk)
New Publication: Biological clocks as age estimation markers in animals: a systematic review and meta-analysis – Dr Desire Dalton
How do you determine how old an animal is? One way is to look at the teeth (tooth layer annulation and otolith layering). However, these methods are invasive and can generally only be used post-mortem, especially in wild animals as an age-at-death estimation. Two DNA based methods have been suggested as appropriate to determine age. Telomeres occur at the ends of chromosomal DNA and shorten as an animal ages. Aging is also correlated with changes in DNA methylation where a small molecule called a methyl group are added to the DNA. Louis-Stéphane IV Le Clercq a PhD student of Dr Desiré Lee Dalton (Lecturer in Forensic Science, Teesside University) has conducted a meta-analysis study that included 40 species and 60 age-estimation models. The study indicated that both methods can be used in studying age in animals and do not suffer significantly from variation due to differences in the lifespan of the species, genome size, karyotype, or tissue type but rather that quantitative method, patterns of inheritance, and environmental factors should be the main considerations. However, methylation may be superior to telomere length in terms of accuracy and cross-taxa portability; however, costs may be higher depending on the technique use to study methylation.
An animal cell indicating the mechanisms of cellular ageing at the molecular level that are currently used as molecular biomarkers for age.
Access the publication through the publisher’s website with this link (DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12992)
Florida comes to Vindolanda
One of the highlights of research is being able to share your enthusiasm with visitors, and this week Dr Jamie Bojko and Dr Gillian Taylor hosted a group of students from University of Florida at Vindolanda and Magna.
The students were from diverse subject areas, but were fascinated by the talk from CEO Vindolanda Excavations – Dr Andrew Birley showing wooden structure from the earliest roman fort and (after a small hill and hot walk!) the stunning views that Hadrians Wall has to offer. The weather was hot but apparently cool in comparison to florida! The group from Behringer lab were travelling around the UK, as part of the studies, seeing amazing locations and experiencing a wide range of activities, such as snorkelling, rock climbing, hiking stunning coastlines.
The pictures are taken from some of the activities on the wall and UK.. simply stunning..
New Publication: Genetic diversity and origin of captive lion (Panthera leo) in South Africa: an assessment and comparison to wild populations
In the last five decades, African lions (Panthera leo) have declined by almost 75% due to habitat fragmentation and prey declines. In South Africa, there are more than 3500 lions in the wild and approximately 7,400 individuals in captivity. Plans have been put in place to start processes to end captive lion activities. There are contrasting views on the potential conservation value of captive lions, with some suggesting that captive lions could be integrated into wild populations to restore populations, while others have argued that captive lions have no conservation value. Thus, collaborators with Dr Desiré Lee Dalton (Lecturer in Forensic Science, Teesside University) have analysed the genetic diversity and origin of captive lion in South Africa. Captive lions were found to be genetically similar to existing wild South African lions. However, the captive population are showing signs of genetic drift with the potential risk of inbreeding the future as they have been managed in isolation from wild populations. Thus, the reintroduction of captive individuals into wild populations may have detrimental impacts and these factors would need to be studied prior to the consideration of re-wilding.
Access the publication through the publisher’s website with this link (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10592-023-01530-5)
Talk to Teesside Archaeological Society – Dr Gillian Taylor
It was a great pleasure to be invited to give a talk for the Teesside Archaeological Society. This is a great society to interact and get involved with, so take a look at there website of events over the summer.
The talk was called ‘What the Romans left behind: chemical signatures from occupation layers’ and focused on analytical chemistry, the talk was inspired and taken from our recent frontiers publication, which sounds rather more complicated and boring!! ‘Archaeological soil from Roman occupation layers can be differentiated by microbial and chemical signatures’. Thankfully I focused on the chemistry and leave the microbial parts to Dr Caroline Orr. The chemistry part focused on faeces, how do we extract, what do we look for and why it is important to know about activity, the talk talked about horse stables, and showed recent pictures of the excavation, the cook house floor and how we can tentatively infer from the soil smell what was going on 2,000 years ago!
But any talk is not complete without discussing climate change and talking about our new lottery heritage funded project, Roman Magna, a site under threat and changing, and I presented some of the data we are recording and how we are using the data.. There is an amazing new dig diary to follow. I will be at the magna site and presenting work at conferences in the summer so also watch this space for updates..
An evening at Pint of Science Festival – Aboli Vavle
As a PhD student who is in her final year and writing her thesis, it gets incredibly stressful. But there are few things that can help you relax and I had one such evening last week. I was asked if I could give a little talk in an event called Pint of Science. If you are not aware, Pint of Science is a science festival that takes place over 3 days in five hundred cities around the world where local researchers go to their local pubs and cafes and discuss their research with members of public over a glass of pint! And I think it is one of the best ways to talk about your research.
So, on 24th May around 5:30 in the evening, all of us presenting gathered in a café closer to the Uni, Off the Ground where Rhys and Helen had organised the event. We started presentations a little after 6 p.m. The theme for the evening was ‘Microscopic Missions’ and I was supposed to go first. But my husband, Jack wanted to be there for the talk and because of his work, he was running late. Zoe, who is currently in 2nd year of her PhD very kindly agreed to go first and very wonderfully presented her topic about antimicrobial resistance where she talked about ‘superbugs’ and how they are a threat and can possibly cause the next pandemic. Luckily, Jack made it before my talk.
My topic was ‘A Secret Life of Dyes’ where I talked about ancient dyes and how they were important in different civilization. This was followed by, why it is important to study dyes as well as the difficulties that come with it and potential solutions. I also talked about any how different analytical methods especially the less-destructive ones are getting more importance and talked about how useful these methods are. I kept the talk light, without using heavy scientific words to make sure the audience is not lost or confused. I also explained chromatography and its principle with a lovely animation to explain HPLC and some of the audience came to me and said that my presentation was quite easy to follow. I was extremely pleased about this, as that’s what I was aiming for. Also, the presentation was full of colourful pictures which made it more interesting and attractive. Overall, the talk was received very well, and I got some very interesting questions about investigating dyes, which I was very happy to answer and discuss.
We then had a little break where the audience interacted with us, asking us questions and doubts, which was so amazing. The event ended with talk by Dom, who is a lecturer in microbiology. He gave a great talk about how radiations are used to understand microsporidia. He had these cool lasers to demonstrate reflections of green and red colours which all of us thought were remarkably interesting.
Overall, the event was a wonderful experience for all of us. Evenings or discussions like these should be organised more often as they help spread the information to people who are interested in these findings and topics regardless of how much background knowledge they have. It helps us as researchers as well to talk about our work in a less stressful environment and spread the knowledge. Here’s to more event like these!
Webinar review: Marine Litter
On Thursday 25 May 2023, members of TU Environment Research Group joined the Yorkshire Geological Society’s webinar featuring Professor Richard Thompson who gave a fascinating account of the global environmental challenges surrounding plastic litter. Professor Thompson OBE FRS was the first to coin the term microplastics in 2004 (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1094559) and he continues to dedicate his career to researching microplastics in the environment, their impact on marine biota, and identifying sustainable solutions to this increasingly urgent issue. For more on Richard and his research, please see his University of Plymouth staff page at https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/richard-thompson.
External speaker: Professor Hilary Lappin-Scott
The Centre for Biodiscovery was pleased to welcome Professor Hilary Lappin-Scott OBE to the National Horizons Centre. Prof. Lappin-Scott gave a talk detailing her journey from early career researcher to professor (and beyond!). As Hilary is from Middlesbrough her story resonated with many of the team. We were inspired to hear of how she became the first female professor at Exeter University and how she has used her subject knowledge and position to help highlight issues of inclusivity within the sciences. Hilary then met specifically with our microbiology based researcher to offer advice to them. We hope to welcome Hilary back to the NHC soon.
External speaker: Professor Phil James
On Thursday 18 May the TU Earth & Environment Research Group hosted external speaker, Professor Phil James, based in the Department of Engineering at Newcastle University.
Phil leads the Urban Observatory programme in Newcastle which is a multi-million pound investment in sensing infrastructure providing millions of observations about the city. According to Phil, his expertise and research interests lie in the fusion and integration of data for analytics and visualisation.
Phil’s brilliant and well-attended talk ‘Smart, sustainable cities: Challenges in new urban data and realising future cities for citizens’ focused on the wealth of data that the Urban Observatory programme has compiled over the past seven years, how it is used, and the challenges faced when dealing with large and, at times, sensitive data. Because the data that Phil’s team are collecting are applicable to a range of disciplines (e.g., environmental management (air quality, noise), public health (social distancing during Covid), sustainable urban development, and big data), TU Earth & Environment extended the invitation to our TU colleagues in Engineering and Public Health.
You can read more about Phil and his research interests on his profile page https://www.ncl.ac.uk/engineering/staff/profile/philipjames.html and the publicly available data and visualisation tool that Phil presented is available here https://newcastle.urbanobservatory.ac.uk/. If you intend to use the data, Phil has recommended accessing the Archive Data option.
New paper alert from Dr Desire Dalton
New Publication: PAReTT: a Python package for the Automated Retrieval and management of divergence time data from the TimeTree resource for downstream analyses
Louis-Stéphane IV Le Clercq a PhD student of Dr Desiré Lee Dalton (Lecturer in Forensic Science, Teesside University) has developed PAReTT – a Python Automated Retrieval of TimeTree data. In order to study speciation (emergence of a new species, sub-species, or ecotypes) accurate fossil-calibrated, estimates of divergence times are needed. PAReTT is a biologist-friendly, easily accessible, and freely available algorithm that can be used to retrieve (1) divergence times, between an individual pair or between all species in a list, (2) evolutionary timelines, for individuals or a list species, and (3) time trees of the divergence times, either for all available species within a specified taxon or between individual species supplied as a list. Future updates will include the ability to switch between scientific names and common names for species as well as the ability to calculate diversification rates for a table of multiple lineages.
Access the publication through the publishers website with this link (DOI: 10.1007/s00239-023-10106-3)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00239-023-10106-3