If like us, you're suffering from the post super meeting blues, well here is something to get excited about!
We are announcing
#BSPR25
which will be held from the 7th-9th of July in Liverpool! We are super excited about the next meeting and hope to see you all there!
The lab has just been awarded an 8-year grant to study coronavirus replication! 🍾🎉
Job ads will appear around end October but we are particularly looking for PDRAs with coronavirus reverse genetics experience or CL3 coronavirus-host interactions. ~Mar 2024 start.
Confirmed in appointment and a permanent contract (as close to tenured as we get in the uk)! 🍾🎉
Massive thanks to all the lab members, mentors, collaborators and colleagues over the years who made this this happen.
Just finished the latest
@cstross
book! In fairness, leaving the EU so we can reinstate the death penalty as human sacrifice to placate the elder god secretly running the government is probably the most coherent and internally consistent argument for Brexit I have heard...
And its out! My/
@Emmottlab
first PI paper “Characterising proteolysis during SARS-CoV-2 identifies viral cleavage sites and cellular targets with therapeutic potential”.
This was a huge collaborative effort with 19 authors spanning 4 continents!
Fellowship wasn’t funded, but will have the whisky anyway. Big thanks anyway to the peer reviewers who were all hugely supportive of the proposal. Hopefully next time!
I am delighted to announce that the
@emmottlab
will be opening its doors
@c4pr_liv
/
@livuniIIB
on November 1st. The lab will be using
#MassSpec
approaches, including single-cell proteomics (
#SCoPE2
) to study positive-sense RNA virus replication and ribosome specialisation.
Still a trickle of PhD applications coming through - I've put together some tips on applying for science PhDs in the UK - this can differ a little between countries. Other (UK) PI's do you have your own?
I’m delighted to share the first
@emmottlab
preprint! In this paper we study protease activity in
#SARSCOV2
infected cells. We found multiple unknown cleavage sites in viral proteins, and novel cellular targets of the viral proteases essential for virus replication.
Characterisation of protease activity during SARS-CoV-2 infection identifies novel viral cleavage sites and cellular targets for drug repurposing
#bioRxiv
This morning:
Eldest: ‘Ed, why did you write a book on the coronavirus?’
Me: ‘That’s my PhD thesis’.
Eldest: ‘But it wasn’t around yet!’
Me: ‘It’s not the only coronavirus 😂’
Install complete! Excited to start using our new CellenONE instrument to support single-cell/single-cell proteomics work here in the
@c4pr_liv
. bioBUBBLE to support higher-containment work should arrive shortly!
Huge thanks to
@BBSRC
for supporting this with 21ALERT funding.
Its great to see lots of people working on COVID-19 from other disciplines, but perhaps get someone who has actually worked on these viruses before involved? Its fairly painful to keep seeing papers coming out which ignore past coronavirus literature.
I’ve posted a thread before, but seeing as it’s
#phd
application time again, time for a recap on how to get your application looked at:
Most applications are clearly not competitive from the initial email - you need to get this right.
Ok, so I’ve identified my future island lair. Now I just need funding to buy it and set up my underground lab... Plymouth's historic Drake's Island fortress on sale for £6m
Great to see places stepping up on COVID funding! It would be nice if it was accessible to those of us with prior coronavirus experience, rather than channeling it through silos we can’t access... As a new PI, funding is the biggest obstacle preventing me from contributing more.
There’s been a big cat-shaped hole in our family since losing Cinnamon to lymphoma earlier this year, but today things started to get better. Meet Charlie and Cyril :)
Great start to the day!
Email: 'We read your
#preprint
and have some data that we think could work well if you want to include in a revision. Lets talk!'. Big plus for
#preprints
and cooperation in science against
#COVID19
!
Trying something a bit different this morning. Do you want to support coronavirus research into COVID-19? At Liverpool? I’ve just started a GoFundMe to raise funds in support of
@emmottlab
’s
#COVID19
research! Please share!
More avoidable stupidity and mixed messages from the government. Not allowed to meet in groups over 6, and advised to avoid socialising, but encouraged to sit in a cinema full of people.
BBC News - Boris Johnson urges people to ‘go to the cinema’
My first first-author manuscript with
@slavovLab
and Marko Jovanovic, ‘Ribosome stoichiometry: from form to function’ is now published in
@TrendsBiochem
. We discuss evidence for, and emerging approaches to study ribosome specialisation. Read it here:
Sometimes academia is a pretty awful career path. Other days it can be great! Today was the latter!
- Seeing lab members getting settled and going so quickly!
- First in-person
@emmottlab
lab meeting! Including welcoming new MSc student Georgia.
- First in-person tutee meeting!
Ah, the joys of writing the personal statement bits in grants. Anyone else die a little inside every time they have to write about themselves for these?
Walked back through the city centre. Lots of crowds, no distancing, few masks. We all want a return to normal, but pretending that it’s all over is just going to result in more cases and another lockdown. If we keep distance and wear masks we can keep things ‘more’ normal.
We’ve updated our SARS-CoV-2 preprint investigating proteolysis by viral and host enzymes during SARS-CoV-2 infection! Lots of new data, and an author list now covering 4 countries on 3 continents! Read it here:
Belated lab birthday celebration after the Euston chaos last week! The
@emmottlab
is now 2 years old! Lots of excitement over the last 12 months with
@StephenNTD
, Sophie and Georgia joining the lab and the labs first paper being published!
And it’s finally out! Our paper on performing and optimising SCoPE2-based analysis is now out in peer-reviewed form in
@NatureProtocols
! You can read it’s preprinted version on
@biorxivpreprint
here:
Thanks
@SelectScience
for interviewing on SARS-CoV-2. We covered the role of omics, especially mass-spec, and our latest preprint where we studied changes to the N-terminome following SARS-2 infection, as well as the COViD-19 MSC the lab is a part of!
14yo back from school. All the kids talking about vaccine. Lots hesitant because ‘the healthcare body didn’t think it was safe to recommend to kids’. While this isn’t correct it’s an entirely predictable and avoidable reading of JCVI advice.
If anyone wants to start playing with TMTpro/16plex in Maxquant (1.6.7.0), you can find my modifications.xml and a mqpar file to load these up for MS2 analysis with correction factors for lot UH290428 at my dropbox folder:
Covid grant rejected for ‘not having impact within within the next 12 months’.
Clinician partner (virologist): ‘are they cracked? I read your grant?!’
Possibly biased but definitely helped my mood :)
This! There’s decades of work out there on avian coronavirus which has a lot in common with the new data coming out. Just because it’s a ᶜʰᶦᶜᵏᵉⁿ virus doesn’t mean the data should be ignored.
@soragnilab
Agreed. We saw the same with Zika. While people from other fields may have much to contribute it’s important to first do the research and read up on the extensive coronavirus literature (from related viruses) already out there.
Journals, please don't ask for corresponding authors to input full addresses, emails and telephone numbers for every author on initial submission. Theres 17 on this paper and I'm losing my will to live. An email and institution is fine surely?
@SGriffin_Lab
@TigressEllie
@jneill
@adamhamdy
And the constant mention of ‘natural infection’ and ‘natural immunity’ in the press coverage 🤮. Just designed to try and convey that infection is fine and that the nasty vaccine is ‘unnatural’/bad. You wonder if these people actually want things to get better!
Excellent start to April - latest paper now out! Glad to have contributed - our lab is now using this workflow to study viral PTMs at single-cell level!
Today
@naturemethods
published prioritized mass spectrometry proteomics.
Applying it to single-cell proteomics (pSCoPE), we:
◼️Increased data completeness to 93%
◼️Doubled proteome coverage
◼️Increased the dynamic range
The Recently-Independent Virologists Retreat (RIVR) 2024 will be on Jan 9-10th 2024 (date changed!) in Liverpool. Booking will open in the next week or two.
If you are a new group leader in virology in the UK and not yet on the RIVR mailing list please get in touch to be added!
I think rather than saying lab-based studies are lacking, or slow to pick up the pace maybe consider why? The near total absence of funding for lab-based studies compared to clinical or epidemiological studies is probably a good place to start.
An analysis of studies on SARS-CoV-2 reveals that basic lab-based studies on the microbiology of the virus, including research on its pathogenesis and mechanisms of viral transmission, are lacking (via
@medical_xpress
)
I am delighted to announce that the
@emmottlab
will be opening its doors
@c4pr_liv
/
@livuniIIB
on November 1st. The lab will be using
#MassSpec
approaches, including single-cell proteomics (
#SCoPE2
) to study positive-sense RNA virus replication and ribosome specialisation.
After two months buried in grant apps/teaching/conferences, I got to put on my lab coat, pick up a pipette and do some cell culture again. It was great! 🤣
On a brighter note - findaphd hasn't been updated yet, but there is now a fully-funded PhD studentship open for applications on the labs protease/single-cell work. Will repost when updated. Eligibility: UK, Deadline: end May. DM/email with any questions.