'Back to basic science- findings and thoughts from two recent cell biology PhD projects'

Dr Noel Carter is a molecular biologist who has been involved in research in several fields from bacterial genome sequencing to human transplantation. He regularly collaborates with researchers in Health Sciences and Wellbeing as well as having a long-standing collaboration with Clinical staff at the Freeman Hospital.

Noel obtained his PhD in bacterial genomics in 1996 at Newcastle University where he then worked on bacterial functional genomics before moving to the Department of Surgery to work on mammalian inflammation. Here he began to work on the role of glycosaminoglycans in facilitating cytokine and chemokine functionality. Noel joined the University of Sunderland in December 2001 where he continued to work on inflammation in a transplantation setting and formed a collaboration with Prof. David Talbot at the Freeman hospital. The research with Prof. Talbot focussed on expanding the donor pool for transplantation.

More recently Noel has returned to his roots and been involved in more cell biology projects.

This lecture will focus on the work of two of his recently successful PhD students works. The first was a project to understand the molecular function of the protein AMBRA1 using a range of omics methodologies. The second was investigating the role of key amino acids in the chemokine CCL5 and how they facilitate interaction with the glycosaminoglycan heparan sulphate and what that means biologically.