Researchers from the School of Biosciences are among 62 from across the UK who have been awarded a share of £12 million to pursue visionary bioscience research.
The investment by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council’s (BBSRC) Pioneer Awards aims to enable the pursuit of unique ideas that challenge current thinking and paradigms or open up entirely novel areas of exploration altogether.
In Sheffield, Professor Elizabeth Smythe will lead a project exploring how endocytic pathways respond to environmental changes including temperature, osmolarity and hypoxia. This has implications for the effect of climate change on insect biodiversity, the spread of agricultural pests as well as healthy ageing.
Dr Emily Noël has been awarded funding for a project using zebrafish to investigate how composition of the extracellular matrix influences initiation of the embryonic heartbeat.
Finally, a team led by Dr Daniel Bose, together with Dr Alison Twelvetrees (SiTraN) and Dr Tim Craggs (Chemistry), will investigate how controversial biomolecular condensates affect enzyme dynamics, building proteins with unnatural amino acids and using single-molecule fluorescence techniques to measure intramolecular protein movements in the cell’s nucleus.
By drawing upon unconventional thinking and approaches, the investigators hope to make exciting discoveries with the potential to transform our understanding of the fundamental rules of life.
These new investigations aim to radically change the way we think about important biological phenomena covering plant, microbial and animal sciences.
Professor Guy Poppy, Interim Executive Chair at BBSRC, said: “Understanding the fundamental rules of life, such as the principles governing genetics, evolution and biological processes, is essential for advancing scientific knowledge. It is also imperative to societal progress.
“Many of the challenges faced by today's society, such as global food security, environmental sustainability and healthcare, are deeply rooted in biological processes.
“BBSRC is committed to understanding the rules of life and by investing in cutting-edge discovery research through schemes such as the Pioneer Awards pilot, we are expanding the horizons of human knowledge while helping to unlock innovative bio-based solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges.”