Manchester Institute of Biotechnology

(CODE M) Losing your head: how do bacterial viruses evolve into anti-competitor weapons? at The University of Manchester on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - (CODE M) Losing your head: how do bacterial viruses evolve into anti-competitor weapons? at The University of Manchester, listed on FindAPhD.com

🚨 PhD Studentship available! 🚨

We're hiring a UK student to start in Oct '26 via the BBSRC CODEM scheme. Full studentship plus £10k top-up PA. Study the mysterious ZOMBIE PHAGES 🧟 🦠 with our fabulous @mermanchester.bsky.social and @uommib.bsky.social communities!

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Polymer-tethered glycosylated gold nanoparticles as versatile tools for bio-sensing Glycans direct many biological recognition and signalling processes, spanning basic cell biology to diagnostics and therapy. Multivalent presentation of glycans is well established to increase avidity...

Our latest work is online @chemcomm.rsc.org @uommib.bsky.social . This feature article covers progress we (+ others) in polymer-tethered glycosylated nanoparticles as tools for glycoscience. This spans synthetic rationale and opportunities for deployment.
pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

Alternatives to animal testing are the future — it’s time that journals, funders and scientists embrace them Biomedical research techniques that don’t involve the use of animals are gaining momentum, but those using innovative approaches still face resistance from some quarters.

Well done to the authors, including @alinefmiller.bsky.social & colleagues from @greenstonebio.bsky.social, @uommib.bsky.social, @braintumourrsch.bsky.social, @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social, @stanfordcvi.bsky.social, and @stanfordmedicine.bsky.social.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Towards blood on demand: Rapid post-thaw isolation of red blood cells from multicomponent cryoprotectants Severe blood loss due to trauma, anaemia, or chemotherapy necessitates immediate red blood cell (RBC) transfusions. The short shelf-life of RBCs at 4 …

Our work showing how our macromolecular cryoprotectants unlock "blood on demand' is now published! @uommib.bsky.social From the freezer to fully washed in just 25 minutes, compared to 75 mins using glycerol. Partnership with Tom Whale, Fraser Macrae and more.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti....

Classification of Parkinson’s disease and isolated REM sleep behaviour disorder: delineating progression markers from the sebum volatilome npj Parkinson's Disease - Classification of Parkinson’s disease and isolated REM sleep behaviour disorder: delineating progression markers from the sebum volatilome

Another interesting paper building on the smell of Parkinson's from our colleagues @uommib.bsky.social and @i-med.ac.at & supported by colleagues, patients and healthy volunteers at Northern Care Alliance. Findings support the use of sebum as an accessible biofluid.
rdcu.be/ewDgB
#Parkinsons

Label‐Free and Microplate‐Based Dissection of Glycan‐Virus Interactions Using Polymer‐Tethered Glyconanoparticles This work demonstrates the use of polymer-tethered glycosylated gold nanoparticles for the label-free evaluation of influenza virus binding in a simple microplate. Sialylated linear and branched glyc...

Our latest work is out. Glyconanoparticles with complex branched glycans to interrogate influenza binding, with no labels in a microplate. Nice academic/industry collaboration @uommib.bsky.social with Iceni and AZ, and Rob Field. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

We're hiring!

We seek to appoint an outstanding & ambitious early career scientist to a lectureship position.

💷 Salary: £46,753 to £57,422 per annum, DOE
👩‍🔬 Responsibilities: Teaching and research
🗓️ Deadline: 24 June 2025
📄 Apply: www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Yizhi ‘Patrick’ Cai: An iGEMer who is unraveling nature’s design rules to create synthetic life — iGEM Blog Professor Yizhi ‘Patrick’ Cai, of the University of Manchester, credits iGEM for introducing him to synthetic biology and giving him the experience, colleagues and connections necessary for a successf...

From iGEMer to global leader, Yizhi ‘Patrick’ Cai’s work has shaped synthetic biology across continents, mentoring the next generation and building the future of life design, one genome at a time.

Read about his journey: blog.igem.org/blog/2025/4/...

We're proud to be working with the @uommib.bsky.social and @earlhaminst.bsky.social on a new £8.5M project, funded by @aria-research.bsky.social, to find biotechnological routes to feed a growing population while protecting crops against climate change and pests:

www.jic.ac.uk/news/future-...

The nine teams we're funding in Synthetic Plants are paving the way for more productive, resilient, and sustainable plants. 🌱

Discover how they'll deliver growth in agriculture for the UK + beyond: link.aria.org.uk/sp-c-bs

Scientists look to biotechnology to improve crop resilience and nutritional value A new project - funded by a £8.5M grant from the UK Government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) - will leverage advances in engineering biology to establish synthetic plant chromosome (...

🆕 Scientists at the Earlham Institute, @uommib.bsky.social, and @johninnescentre.bsky.social are partnering to develop #synthetic plant chromosome technologies, to rapidly design and deliver beneficial traits to crops, as part of a new £8.5m @aria-research.bsky.social project.

➡️ buff.ly/n80muy0

improving crop resilience and nutritional value A new project, co-led by Dr Joshua James and Professor Patrick Cai of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology at The University of Manchester, in collaboration with the John Innes Centre and Earlham...

www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/f...

A close up of potato flowers in a greenhouse. They flowers are bathed in a pinkish light from the grow lamps.

Global food production is facing significant climate change-related issues so, we're working on a new £8.5M project funded by @aria-research.bsky.social, with our partners at @earlhaminst.bsky.social &
@johninnescentre.bsky.social to find biotechnological routes help feed our growing population.

improving crop resilience and nutritional value A new project, co-led by Dr Joshua James and Professor Patrick Cai of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology at The University of Manchester, in collaboration with the John Innes Centre and Earlham...

www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/f...

Our team's dedicated microscopy platform for (live) cell imaging is set up @uommib.bsky.social : spinning disk confocal + high-content microscopes, + flow cytometer. This will accelerate our biomaterials discovery for cryo/glyco sciences. Credit to @akalabyabissoyi.bsky.social for hard work!

Registration is now open for the Annual MacroGroupUK Symposia and Medal Award Lectures, hosted @uommib.bsky.social 8/9th September. Fabulous line up of speakers. Thanks to sponsors, we have poster prizes and low registration including all refreshments .
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/2025-macro...

Senior Lecturer/Reader within the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (3 posts available):Manchester Institute of Biotechnology

We have three opportunities for a Senior Lecturer/Asscociate Professor in the MIB.
💷 Salary: £59,139-£70,579 pa, d.o.e
👩‍🔬 Responsibilities: Research and teaching
🗓️ Deadline: 24 June 2025
🌍 Apply: www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

We have another #postdoc vacancy @uommib.bsky.social . Join us to explore new applications of glycan-nanodiagnostics, with our partners Iceni Glycoscience and Field Lab. #glycotime We have world-class facilities in great environment. Pls RT.
www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Congratulations to Niklas Geue, formerly of Prof Barran's research group, who received the Wolfgang Paul Study Award from the German Society for Mass Spectrometry for his thesis "Formation, Characterisation and Disassembly of Metallosupramolecular Complexes in vacuo". 🥳🎉

Our new HPLC from Agilent to go along with our Glyconeer is set up and ready at @uommib.bsky.social . This platform for automated polysaccharide synthesis will transform our capabilities for biomaterial discovery. Science soon!

What Factors Determine the Brevione B Desaturation Mechanism in the Nonheme Iron Dioxygenase BrvJ? Density functional theory calculations on the nonheme iron desaturase BrvJ show that desaturation happens through two consecutive hydrogen atom abstraction barriers, while the OH rebound barrier is s...

A new paper from Jingyu Cao, Jingyuan Lu and Yuanxin Cao from the de Visser group resolves how Penicillium synthesises Brevione B. This work may help understand the biosynthesis reactions in nature and help to synthesise novel drug molecules.

chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Dean's Doctoral Scholarship Award | The University of Manchester Research. Teaching and learning. Social responsibility. Discover more about The University of Manchester here.

We are looking for enthusiastic, eager learners to join us in exploring human sebum's potential beyond those annoying teenage pimples. Apply before 28th Feb to get nominated for University of Manchester Dean's Doctoral Award (shorturl.at/4gqQG)
#metabolomics #massspec #chemometrics #PhD (1 of 2)

University of Manchester and Bupa combine to affect change on environmental impact of healthcare sector The University of Manchester and Bupa have announced an innovative new collaboration to develop new methods and strategies to drastically reduce the healthcare sector’s environmental impact upon our p...

@labgibson.bsky.social is part of a new Prosperity Partnership – led by Prof Mike Shaver – to address plastic waste in healthcare. This partnership between @official-uom.bsky.social and @bupauk.bsky.social will drive meaningful change for the sector.

www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/u...

The University of Manchester partners in £8.2 million initiative to accelerate diagnostic innovation The project, led by the University of Kent, and including The University of Manchester, and University College London (UCL), will address the development gap in the diagnostics innovation ecosystem.Ac...

Prof Alan Dickson will co-lead a new £8.2m project with the University of Kent and UCL that will bridge the gap in diagnostics development.

CADDA will bring together academics, industry, the NHS and regulators to help bring new products to market.

www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/t...

🔔 Very happy to announce that the lab has recently moved to @uommib.bsky.social @official-uom.bsky.social 🦠🧪

If anyone is intrigued by what TB ‘eats’ and would like to join us then you are in luck as 2 postdoc positions are currently available! Please get in touch if you are interested.

Innovative enzyme breakthrough could transform drug and chemical manufacturing Published today (15 January 2025) in Nature, this breakthrough centres on a process called nucleophilic aromatic substitution (SNAr), a class of transformation that is widely used across the chemical ...

Professors Anthony Green and Igor Larrosa have developed a brand new enzyme, SNAr1.3, that catalyses SNAr reactions with high efficiency and selectivity under mild conditions. This could transform drug and chemical manufacturing.

Read more here: www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/i...

YouTube video by UoMBiotechnology How enzymes can help us curb waste at Christmas

A link to the clip: youtu.be/83ZswhEqTYw

Did you catch us on BBC Breakfast this morning?

Dr Neil Dixon and Dr Micaela Chacón explain how biotechnology could be used to help us with our Christmas waste.

Start from 17:45: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

NEW PAPER: @biotechdixon.bsky.social and his team have developed a new process that can turn waste from landfill into useful products like medicines and bioplastics.

Read more here 👉 www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/r...

Our annual Making a Difference Awards are OPEN for entries and nominations! If you are a student, staff member, alumni or a member of our community, we want to hear how you or someone you know is making a difference! #MaDAwards 🎉⭐️ www.socialresponsibility.manchester.ac.uk/get-involved...