Botanical University Challenge 2020 @buc2020

Botanical University Challenge was dreamt up in 2016 by Dr Jon Mitchley (University of Reading) and Professor John Warren (University of Aberystwyth) to celebrate the plants in plant science. Anyone who has talked about biology with school children knows that most think plants are boring. This contrasts with the adult science world where plants are anything but boring. Once at university, some students change their opinion and embrace the challenges of plant science. Botanical University Challenge is an opportunity for students interested in plants meet up and show off their knowledge and interest.

The Institute of Integrative Biology at University of Liverpool researches fundamental and applied biology and over ten of the seventy-five research groups work with plants. National and international funders support their research in areas ranging from fundamental processes like photosynthesis, cell physiology, disease and taxonomy to agriculture and effects of climate change.

The University of Liverpool was therefore pleased to host the third Botanical University Challenge on 19 February 2020. The amount of organisation behind the two and a half hour event was substantial. Outside the university and away from the students, Professor John Warren led the task of getting the questions together. These involved words, pictures and, for the first time, real plant material. Devising a balanced set of questions with short answers for each round was a challenge in itself.

The venue was the University of Liverpool’s Botanic Gardens at Ness on the Wirral peninsular. Several staff at the garden were key to arrangements as well as providing plant material for some of the questions, particularly Jen Lemon-Parkins and Tim Baxter. Staff and students from the School of Life Sciences and Institute of Integrative Biology at University of Liverpool, notably Drs Raj Whitlock, Peter Walley and James Hartwell, were involved with planning. On the day Dr Christoph Hahn and undergraduates Tracey Houghton and Roberta Brewster were essential for organising the teams and making the event run smoothly.

There were a record seven university teams in the competition – Edge Hill, Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan, Reading and York. In addition, the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland supported the event, especially publicising it through a network of local societies. The result was a comfortably full lecture theatre on a wet Wednesday afternoon to enjoy the teams demonstrating their knowledge and quick wits.

The questions ranged from the deceptively simple (What is the name of the plant or molecule in this picture?) to the more difficult (During photosynthesis where does the evolved oxygen come from?). Recalling information is definitely more difficult while being stared at by an audience but the quizmaster Emeritus Professor Alan McCarthy kept the teams answering with a mixture of charm and authority. Both reaction times for pressing a buzzer and knowledge were tested during the afternoon, and a coffee-break after the initial preliminary rounds was essential. Several of the teams were competing for the first time, but were not daunted even though the University of Reading team won (again), with University of Liverpool the runner-up (again).

Comments from the audience showed how much they enjoyed the event, and how impressed they were by the students.

Plans for Botanical University Challenge 2021 have started, with the venue again likely to be in northern England.

Spooky Science Take 2!

Nearly 300 primary school pupils from across Merseyside visited campus on Wednesday 23rd October 2019 to take part in some ‘spooky science’ activities led by Institute of Integrative Biology and School of Life Sciences in collaboration with World Museum Liverpool, the event used the Halloween theme to capture the imagination of the pupils and introduce them to some different areas of life sciences research.

During the workshops, pupils learnt about how animals adapt to their environment, communicate with each other and protect themselves from prey. Activities included exploring the anatomy of creepy-crawlies under microscopes, examining animal skulls from different species, discovering how bats see in the dark and understanding how the human body reacts to fear.

Zoology staff from the World Museum also brought along some taxidermy specimens, including a raven, for the pupils to interact with.

It was amazing to hear the enthusiasm from the pupils from the minute they entered the lab exclaiming wow this is what a real science lab is like! Followed by comments like science is great, I now want to be a scientist when I grow up.

The primary schools that took part were Banks Road, Litherland Moss, Pleasant Street, St Cuthbert’s, St Sebastian’s, Croxteth, St Nicholas and St Anne’s. Academic staff, PDRAs, PhD, masters and undergraduate students helped with running activities throughout the day.

Biochemists inspiring School of Medicine A-level Students at West Lancashire College

A-level students at the School of Medicine at West Lancashire College were inspired by talks from three biochemists Dr Jill Madine, Dr Nigel Jones and Professor Sonia Rocha during November and December 2019. Students learnt about the research carried out within our research groups relating to diseases and their underpinning mechanisms and the career paths each of us followed to reach our current positions. The students were some of the most attentive audience members we have ever spoken to asking questions that wouldn’t be out of place at large International Scientific Conferences. We hope to welcome some of the students for summer work experience placements in IIB.

Shrewsbury School Visit

46 year 12 pupils and 4 teachers from Shrewsbury School visited IIB on Wednesday 8^th January to discover the amazing technology and facilities we have within the institute. The day organised by Dr Jill Madine began with an unmissable opportunity to promote UG courses at Liverpool from Dr Andy Bates, School of Life Sciences. The pupils then learnt about a wide range of applications using the available technologies from Dr Marie Phelan, Dr Linda D’Amore, Dr Gareth Wright and Professor Pat Eyers. In the afternoon the students got to see the facilities up close and ask questions during tours of Barkla X-Ray laboratory of Biophysics, NMR Centre for Structural Biology and Centre for Genomic Research from PhD students Liam McCormick and Kangsa Amporndanai.

Healthy Heart=Healthy Brain at Museum of Science and Industry

On Thursday 24^th October Hannah Davies and Jill Madine represented University of Liverpool alongside Salford Institute for Dementia and Manchester University at Museum of Science and Industry to promote the work funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK in the North West and enhance public understanding of dementia. The theme for the day was healthy heart=healthy brain and involved a range of activities to promote ways that people can keep their heart and brain healthy alongside demonstrations of some of the research that is ongoing to try and fight dementia in our local area. Participants included children and their families, carers, people with dementia and their relatives with nearly 1,000 people thought to have attended the event.

Butterfly Crafternoon at the Williamson

On Saturday 8^th June the Williamson Art Gallery & Museum in Birkenhead was host to a special butterfly-themed family drop-in session. Louise Reynolds and Greg Hurst from the department of evolution, ecology and behaviour were on hand to discuss all things butterfly and also brought with them some butterflies, caterpillars and pupae to show the different parts of a butterfly life cycle. The butterflies were an excellent source of inspiration for the making of many beautiful crafts and drawings. Towards the end of the afternoon everyone was captivated when we were lucky enough to watch as some butterflies emerged from their chrysalides. Thank you to Pam Sullivan for helping with the crafts and for letting us bring our butterflies to visit.

 

 

Empowering girls from Holly Lodge Girls’ College and inspiring them to pursue scientific careers – 19th June 2019

As part of the volunteering undertaken by Dr Eva Caamano-Gutierrez with the charity The Girls’ Network we hosted a group of girls from Holly Lodge College and showed them how the real life of scientists looks like.

Our aim was to showcase the multidisciplinary and collaborative research that is undertaken in the institute while trying to encourage all the girls to pursue further education, especially in scientific fields.

Arriving just after 16:00 the groups of 19 girls and a few curious mentors arrived to the IIB and were greeted by Dr Jill Madine, Dr Marie Phelan and Dr Eva Caamano. They took all the girls to visit the Biochemistry labs, the NMR Centre for Metabolomics and the Bioinformatics office where both the CBF and the CGR are hosted. Our message was clear: we work on very cool projects, we only succeed working together as a team, our jobs are hard but flexible and overall science is really exciting!

The cherry on the cake was put on by our software developer Dr Tony McCabe who showcased a number of software solutions applied to life sciences that really brought the ‘wow’ factor into the conversation.

The girls were interested in multiple aspects discussed during the visit ranging from specifics of an academic career, including what is a PhD? Or do you get paid while doing one? To being surprised about the fact that Charities such as the British Heart Foundation fund many different research projects.

Following this visit we had our last mentoring session for the academic year. When the girls were asked what they think they can they achieve in their lives they all answer unison “Anything”.

We are doing something good here. Let’s keep them coming in future years!

Bringing the natural world to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital

Post by Dr Ian Wilson

On 12^th and 13^th June 2019, the natural world took over a corner of the atrium at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. Nightingale song and the tinkling trickle of a running stream played out across the atrium as a spotlight drew the eye to our little collaborative corner of creativity. I had joined colleagues from the Department of English to host an outreach event encouraging better understanding of, and empathy with, ‘Nonhuman Species’ via a mixture of attention-grabbing science and imagination-sparking creativity.

Members of the Department of English helped children explore their creative sides by encouraging them to think about a number of different species and what their lives are like. Could they explain in an acrostic poem the nature of a tree? Whilst colouring in pictures of nightingales, could they stop and consider what emotions a nightingale’s song makes them feel? Or could they find their new favourite story in our stack of nature-themed books and lose themselves in a world away from the hustle and bustle of the hospital? Our empathy and fascination with the natural world and non-human species are key to our understanding and appreciating them so we hope that these activities will have sparked some curiosity in our young visitors.

At the same time, I paired with Creative Writing PhD student Bernadette McBride to show the public that science and creativity can belong hand-in-hand. I work in Dr Stew Plaistow’s lab group, investigating the effects of climate change on populations of Daphnia magna – so-called ‘water fleas’. Daphnia magna is a keystone species, meaning that, if it is affected by climate change, the impacts upon other species and factors within the ecosystems in which it resides will also be affected. As such, the importance of understanding temperature-induced effects on population diversity and genetic content in Daphnia cannot be understated.

 I brought with me a model of the Plaistow lab group’s experimental pond set-up at Ness Gardens, Wirral. This allowed me to better explain our work to older participants but also gave the younger children the opportunity to catch Daphnia magna from our miniature ponds and see them up close and personal on a TV screen-equipped microscope. Children were shown the different body parts of the twitchy micro-crustaceans on the screen and were given Daphnia-themed word searches and colouring sheets, whilst older visitors were told all about the group’s research at Ness Gardens.

Bernadette, meanwhile, is writing a short story from the perspective of an individual Daphnia magna for a collection of tales concerning climate change. As such, children were given the opportunity to take what they’d learned about Daphnia magna and use their creativity and imagination to think about how Daphnia might feel and what they might notice about their environment as it changes through climate change.

 We hope that our event made children think more about the natural world, as well as making the public aware that science and the arts don’t always have to be viewed as disparate entities – sometimes one can influence the other, leading to even greater insights. This is an event we intend to run again in future in different locations across the city as the Department of English looks to broaden its audience.

 

 

Liverpool LightNight – The Antimicrobial Avengers

Each year Liverpool hosts a one-night only art festival where local companies and organisations open their doors to the public. The evenings consist of performances, talks, workshops and more with this year’s theme: Ritual. STEAMLab – a collection of researchers and artists who are interested in sharing scientific knowledge through art – hosted the Antimicrobial Avengers.

In modern society, it has become almost a ritual to reach for the antibiotics as soon as you start to feel unwell. Antimicrobial avengers aimed to engage children and adults with the idea that antimicrobials are not a magical cure-all, before showing them how nature is inspiring research into alternative antimicrobials. For example, the structure of shark and gecko skin prevents bacteria from attaching to their surface, and Komodo dragons have antimicrobial proteins in their blood which make them resistant to many bacteria – important when you have enough bacteria in your mouth to cause sepsis with one bite! Antimicrobial surfaces are being used to develop sterile medical equipment such as catheters, and komodo blood proteins are being researched for possible applications.

Our event had 3 main stalls: a mini interactive exhibition of komodo, gecko and shark skin rendered in clay by Helen Birnbaum; a make-your-own bacteria stall; and a complete the comic strip stand, featuring ‘Shark Girl’ and ‘Komodo Dragon’ versus the evil ‘Superbugs’ in a series of comic strips (see here) designed by our Artist in Residence, Jess Irwin. Jen Adcott from the Centre for Cell Imaging provided videos of bacteria in action which were played throughout the evening.

Families began filtering in from 5pm onwards. Their knowledge ranged from the level of doctors and researcher to almost nothing at all. It was a fantastic evening of engaging children in science (or in one case designing a friendly bacteria called shiny who apparently lived in its creators eyeball) and talking to adults who had genuine interest in the subject.

It was a wonderfully successful event and fun for all involved. Talking with adults and children about a topic of such great importance is always rewarding, especially when they learn something new. Everyone had a great time and we can’t wait to do it all again!

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Mark Roughly, Jess, Raechelle and Louise for making this event possible and to the rest of the team for all the extra help on the day

Funding from the Centre for the Humanities and Social Sciences of Health, Medicine and Technology (CHSSHMT)

From the University of Liverpool: Raechelle D’Sa (Lecturer)– Louise Reynolds (Postdoc)- Nicola White (Research technician)- Jen Adcott (Technician)– Helen Davison (PhD student), Jess Irwin (MA Art in Science, Artist in Residence)

From Liverpool Jon Moores University: Mark Roughly (programme leader of MA Art in Science)

Others: Helen Birnbaum

 

A few Shots and Pints of Science from us all in IIB

Pint of Science is an international festival of science taking place over three days in bars and pubs across the world. In Liverpool, the event, coordinated by Faculty of Life Sciences public engagement officer Laura Winters, took place in three different pubs over three nights.

On Monday evening, Raphaël Lévy and Hannah Davies co-chaired “Deadly Viruses, Cheating Microbes, and Other Things Small!” in the Baltic Social featuring Siobhan O’Brien, Jen Adcott and Calum Semple with volunteer Emma Cartledge. Science is a collective enterprise that works thanks to people in different roles and that evening was a good reminder of that: Siobhan is a Tenure Track fellow in the Institute of Integrative (this means she is starting to establish herself as a group leader), Jen is a technician in the Centre for Cell imaging (i.e. she helps lots of other scientists with the microscopy needs) and Calum is a Professor of Child Health and Outbreak Medicine in the Institute for Translational Medicine.

Siobhan talked about the social life of microbes using examples from biology (e.g. black slime mould), sociology (the prisoners’ dilemma) and also from popular show the Golden Balls. She explained the mechanisms by which individuals in groups of people/microbes make decisions that affect the success/demise of the entire group. She concluded with some comments about the relevance of these considerations to the spread of bacterial infections.

Jen spoke next. She shared her enthusiasm for her toys: the multimillion pounds suit of microscopes in the Centre for Cell Imaging. She gave an introduction to light microscopy and the wide size range of objects they are looking at, from tiny bacteria to entire fruit flies. She explained her role as a technician. Microscopy is not just “getting a nice image”; microscopy is a scientific experiment that requires good understanding of the technique and of how to analyse the images. Jen is there to help other scientists getting access to these technologies and she shared some examples of recording the movement of cells with relevance to cancer biology.

After a break (including pints, looking at spider and some live aphids with a microscope, and feeling an awesome microscopy quiz prepared by Jen), we were not quite ready for Calum’s dramatic entrance in a full Ebola gear. He started by undressing (just the protective outfit) showing the extraordinary precautions necessary to prevent contamination. Even with such precautions, the epidemic took the life of a number of doctors and nurses. His talk was a moving tale weaving the gravity of his personal experience of working on the Ebola epidemics in West Africa (for which he and his team received the Queen’s Ebola Medal) with discussions of how outbreaks are described in Hollywood movies. It prompted a number of questions, including a final one about what is the best way to protect oneself and our family. In a country such as the UK where there is a functioning health system, his answer was unambiguous: keep calm and follow the instructions of the authorities.

On Tuesday evening, Chris Deputy, marketing and communications officer at IIB hosted “An Evening of Abnormal Eating, Pretend Drinking and Smelling Wee” in Oh Me Oh My, just opposite the famous Liver Building. The evening saw academics from psychology discuss their work and its impact on health and medicine. Unfortunately, one of our headline speakers, Elinor Chapman of Translational Medicine, was unable to attend and so our audience will have to wait until next year before they can learn about the history of urine in health and disease.

During the evening, two members of IIB took part in a “shots of science” competition, where they described their research in three minutes to an audience who then voted for their favourite talk. Ewan Harney, Post-doc research associate in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour (DEEB) spoke about his research into “jumping genes” in fruit flies, and what these genes can tell us about our DNA. Holly Coombes, also from DEEB, then shared her research into mammalian scents and what secrets they reveal about the animal kingdom, as well as the insights they offer into how humans respond to smells

Pint of Science is an annual science festival, taking place towards the end of May every year, so make sure you look out for our Pint of Science talks next year!