BBSRC Impact Showcase 2021

PhD student takes a new rapid COVID-19 test from idea to reality

Jake Carter, a PhD student at the University of Birmingham, was in his last year when COVID-19 and the first England lockdown forced him to leave the lab and stay at home. With the support of his supervisors, university colleagues, the business that hosted his placement and the wider research community, he translated his existing research into an idea for a new, rapid test. The new method has now been shown to be just as sensitive but faster than current tests, giving a result in under 10 minutes.

“It’s been exciting to do stuff that is developing as we go, rather than work to a fixed idea. And really satisfying that it worked! Hopefully, it will actually help people.”

Jake Carter, Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Partnership

PhD student takes new rapid COVID-19 test from idea to reality – BBSRC (ukri.org)

Resources and collaboration key to the Earlham Institute meeting the COVID-19 challenge

Institutions across the Norwich Research Park collaborated on a pilot study that informed a regional testing programme. The Norwich Testing Initiative was formed by:

• Earlham Institute (EI)
• University of East Anglia
• Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Quadram Institute
• John Innes Centre
• The Sainsbury Laboratory.

Lessons learnt from this pilot were applied across the wider region, increasing testing capacity and alleviating the pressure on the local NHS hospitals.

Resources and collaboration key to the Earlham Institute meeting the COVID-19 challenge – BBSRC (ukri.org)

Tackling coronavirus – understanding the structural biology

Long-term investment in structural biology, along with sustained investment in bioinformatics, has facilitated the underlying research supporting the rapid response to the current pandemic. Our historical investments have resulted in important COVID-19 discoveries, which build on our early understanding of the structure of viruses. This animation describes how these investments came together.

Pirbright’s viral disease expertise supports pandemic response

The Pirbright Institute is a world-leading centre in viral research of livestock and viruses that jump from animals to people. When the pandemic struck, the institute, which receives strategic funding from BBSRC, was well-placed to support the response in areas such as vaccine development, diagnostics capability and coronavirus research.

Coronavirus Hub | The Pirbright Institute.

This gave us the opportunity to highlight the researchers we have supported to:

• better understand the threats of climate change to biological systems
• reduce our emissions and reach Net Zero
• deliver innovative solutions for adaptation and resilience.

Find out more about how BBSRC and UKRI research and innovation will help us navigate the global challenges of climate change by visiting Responding to climate change – UKRI.

Devon farm provides a high-tech lab for sustainable food production

North Wyke Farm Platform is the home of the Sustainable Agriculture team for Rothamsted Research, an Institute strategically funded by BBSRC. Data from the Farm Platform was used as evidence in the Net Zero Carbon & UK Livestock Report commissioned by the Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock. The report was written by environmental, climate and livestock scientists, including Rothamsted Research’s Dr Taro Takahashi. In 2021, Taro contributed to a paper using data from the global platform of research farms, identifying genetic and nutritional changes for ruminant production systems to increase their sustainability.

Fresh fields of carbon cutting grass

Research into Miscanthus grass at Aberystwyth University has demonstrated its remarkable capabilities, not least its capacity to capture carbon in the soil. It also has potential as a net carbon-negative feedstock. The research at the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS), which is strategically funded by BBSRC, has led to:

• ten new Miscanthus species being licensed and undergoing commercial growing trials
• breeding seeds that are quicker to plant and lighter to transport than root portions, reducing the energy input for crops
• publishing the crop’s genome sequence, paving the way for customising varieties, enabling prediction of crop traits from seedlings
• demonstrating that Miscanthus is a net carbon negative feedstock, capturing carbon in the soil
• work within the associated AberInnovation research and innovation campus on promising applications stemming from these fundamental discoveries, using bioprocessing to produce commercially useful products.

BBSRC helps open up fresh fields for harnessing carbon-cutting grass – BBSRC (ukri.org)

New biosensor enables real-time monitoring of wastewater systems

Newcastle University has used BBSRC Follow-on Funding to collaborate with the University of South Wales and Northumbrian Water to take an innovative biosensor from lab concept to field trial. Scientists from both Universities have now gone on to collaborate with Northumbrian Water, Welsh Water, and Chivas Brothers, funded by an Industrial Partnership Award. The team will conduct more extensive testing across different wastewater streams and look at routes to commercialisation. This technology could help protect the environment, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and save on costly wastewater treatments.

“Current methods to assess organic contaminant levels in wastewater take five days to give a result. Proactive environmental protection needs real-time monitoring. Our novel sensor system brings this within reach with significant benefits to the environment and efficiency of wastewater treatment.”

Professor Ian Head, Dean of Research and Innovation, Newcastle University

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/business-and-partnerships/expert-solutions/licensing/bes-sensors/

National Biofilms Innovation Centre pushes forward biofilms research

In 2015, BBSRC and Innovate UK launched Phase 1 of the UK Biofilms Programme; the strategy for this phase was underpinned by a workshop involving all UK industry sectors and a range of academic disciplines. The result was £1.4 million of funding for 21 industry-led collaborative R&D projects. In turn, this led to over £500,000 of private sector investment in the UK Biofilms Programme and fostered over 40 new academic and industrial partnerships across six different industry sectors and many research disciplines.

The second phase of the UK Biofilms Programme included the launch of the National Biofilms Innovation Centre. The centre is the largest knowledge exchange consortium of its kind and has attracted a further £26 million of additional funding.

NBIC Annual Report 2021

Disruptive technology of Babraham spin-out generates interest

Based on pioneering and proprietary technology developed at the Babraham Institute through BBSRC funding, Enhanc3D Genomics (E3DG) was founded in January 2020. The spin-out is world-leading in profiling the three-dimensional folding of the human genome at high resolution. The Co-founders, including Dr Stefan Schoenfelder who remains at the Babraham Institute, now sit on the Board of E3DG.

At the UK Bioscience Forum in October, E3DG, introduced by CEO Debora Lucarelli, was selected as one of the most promising and disruptive life science start-ups in the UK. E3DG continues to recruit staff and secured a further round of £1.5 million seed funding earlier this year.

"I am delighted to see Enhanc3D Genomics attracting further investment. Promoter Capture Hi-C is the classic example of a fundamental scientific insight, funded by the public purse, that offers a game-changing approach to identifying new disease-driving genes and drug targets. And this is all made possible by great scientists like Stefan and his colleagues."

Dr Simon Cook, Interim Director, Babraham Institute

The second phase builds on the success of the 13 initial networks and continues to build capacity and capability in the UK, supporting research and translation in sustainable, biologically-based manufacturing. These multidisciplinary networks organise conferences and events, provide flexible funding for ‘proof of concept’ projects and are open to new members throughout their lifetime.

Natural grapefruit flavouring from industrial biotechnology

A method for producing grapefruit flavouring from orange oil, developed by Professor Luet Lok Wong and his colleagues at the University of Oxford, is the first innovative product to be sold by spin-out company Oxford Biotrans.

Oxford Biotrans makes its grapefruit compound out of oranges | Business | Chemistry World

Biome Bioplastics – turning biomass into plastic

Professor Timothy Bugg at the University of Warwick used a BBSRC grant to identify a bacterial enzyme which breaks down lignin – a structural material found in plants and notoriously difficult to break down. The research led to a collaboration with Biome Bioplastics, one of the UK’s leading bioplastic developers, to turn the extracted chemicals into bioplastics.

Support from the BBSRC NIBB Lignocellulosic Biorefinery Network – now BBNet – and Industrial Biotechnology Catalyst funding enabled Professor Bugg and Biome to collaborate further and move towards commercialisation.

“I think there is opportunity for a new biotech sector in biobased chemicals in the UK, and these kinds of projects are the way to do it.”

Professor Timothy Bugg, Professor of Biological Chemistry, University of Warwick

Biome Bioplastics – Turning biomass into plastic

Holiferm turns greentech breakthrough into growing business

University of Manchester spin-out Holiferm uses a novel method for making a key ingredient of everyday household products, which avoids the use of fossil fuel-based feedstocks. The resulting ingredient is both biodegradable and low in ecotoxicity – opening pathways to major global markets.  

The networks helped the team develop crucial contacts — Holiferm now has 18 staff, a strategic agreement with one of the world’s biggest chemical producers and major investment to open its first commercial plant.

BBSRC Networks help Holiferm turn greentech breakthrough into growing business

Chemistry research leads to cleaner, greener business

A spin-out company, HydRegen Ltd, focusing on new strategies for cleaning up pharmaceutical manufacturing, has been founded by Professor Kylie Vincent, Dr Holly Reeve and Dr Sarah Cleary at the University of Oxford.

Professor Vincent first worked on the enzyme Hydrogenase as a postdoc in Fraser Armstrong’s labs. After taking up a Royal Society Fellowship, she then secured funding from BBSRC, the ‘Metals in Biology’ network and the Industrial Biotechnology Catalyst to develop a novel technology based on hydrogenase that offers cleaner, safer, and faster chemical production.

The HydRegen technology switches the power source for biocatalysis, from glucose to hydrogen gas, thereby enabling sustainable and efficient continuous manufacturing processes and lowering the barrier-to-entry for biotechnology in chemical manufacturing.

This year, the University of Oxford appointed Professor Vincent as the first Academic Champion for Women in Entrepreneurship to support the priorities in the strategic plan around innovation and entrepreneurship. 

“Sustained 5-year translation funding via the IB Catalyst scheme allowed us to substantially de-risk the technology within the University setting and to explore a wide range of potential applications for our catalysts, making our technology much more attractive to investors when we spun out from the University.”

Professor Kylie Vincent

Chemistry research leads to cleaner, greener business – UKRI

Career stories in clean growth

Featuring Associate Professor Eleanor Binner from the University of Nottingham; Dr Katie Chong of Aston University and Dr Stephen Wallace from the University of Edinburgh.

Pushing for change in soil management and fertiliser use

Agriculture and associated land use change are responsible for approximately 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. New research from Rothamsted Research has revealed how the addition of inorganic fertilisers drains soil of carbon and increases greenhouse gas emissions.

The research builds on long-term BBSRC funding. This includes the Soil to Nutrition initiative and the ASSIST programme, which is jointly funded with the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). The team demonstrated how the high nitrogen and low carbon content of inorganic fertilisers change the structure of soil. This in turn reduces the oxygen within the soil and leads to less efficient and more environmentally harmful microbial processes.

The Rothamsted team have been working to achieve policy change through:

• adding to the strategic roadmap for the Microbiome Innovation Network,
• advising the new Unilever Regenerative Agriculture Principles
• engaging with the team behind the National Food Strategy.

"If you go to the pastures, or the grasslands, or the woodlands at Rothamsted, they contain about 80 tonnes per hectare of organic carbon in the top 30 centimetres of soil. The inorganically fertilised plots have about 20. So, we have lost around 60 tonnes per hectare of carbon and that’s in the atmosphere.”

Professor Andy Neal, Research Scientist, Rothamsted Research

Where there’s muck, there’s brass | Rothamsted Research

Reducing seed loss in Brassica species

The UK oilseed rape and Brassica vegetable markets are worth over £1bn each year. Yield losses of between 10 and 25% in the crop oilseed rape can arise from seeds being released too early, known as premature pod shatter. Losses in these crops are heavily influenced by unfavourable weather patterns. As such, adapting them to buffer against climate change is a pressing challenge for agriculture.

Professor Lars Østergaard and his group at the John Innes Centre are working with industry to understand more about the Brassicaceae and how that knowledge can translate into avoiding yield losses.

Modelling agriculture with climate change for food security

The Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Climate Change and Food Security (FACCE-JPI) brings together 24 countries to address the interconnected challenges of sustainable agriculture, food security and impacts of climate change. It has facilitated 121 collaborative research projects to date.

In 2021, with support from BBSRC, FACCE-JPI launched a pilot Science Policy Knowledge Forum (MACSUR SciPol) to strengthen the link between research and policy. The group met for the first workshop in June to focus on key policy questions and have funded an early career researcher at Queen’s University Belfast.

"We have observed that not even excellent research always manages to make the transfer to policy. The project closes this gap by taking a different approach. We do not wait until policymakers approach us as scientists with questions, but rather gather the questions directly from the policy-making processes in the participating countries."

Professor Katharina Helming, project leader of MACSUR SciPol at the Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)

Industrial collaboration improving food safety, nutrition and sustainability in packaged salad

Researchers at the University of Southampton have been working with Vitacress Salads Ltd to ensure research is translated into better products. Following an initial BBSRC Industrial Partnership Award, the Vitacress Research Unit at Southampton supported BBSRC funded PhD student Elizabeth Arnold to work with Professor Gail Taylor to understand the microbiome on lettuce leaves. Their aim is to breed varieties for improved shelf life and safety.

The university’s Professor Bill Keevil showed that decontaminating the lettuce with chlorine can make foodborne pathogens undetectable on leaves. As a consequence, Vitacress became the first UK company to obtain supermarket approval to sell fresh produce washed in spring water without chlorine. Professor Keevil also co-authored an EPSRC and Vitacress-funded research paper. This showed that water carrying sound and microscopic air bubbles can clean bacteria from salad leaves more effectively than current washing methods used by suppliers and consumers.

“Ensuring food safety for our products is an essential requirement. At Vitacress, we wash our produce in natural spring water, and this type of ground-breaking new technology helps to enhance our process whilst ensuring our commitment to protect the environment is maintained. We are always interested in new developments and are excited to see the results of this research.”

Helen Brierley, Group Technical Director, Vitacress

BBSRC helps put the pea into diabetes prevention

Researchers from Imperial College London, the John Innes Centre, the Quadram Institute and University of Glasgow have shown a promising new role for the mature pea. They demonstrated that a natural pea variety, high in levels of resistant starch, was able to reduce blood-sugar spikes after eating.

"There’s huge scope for the UK to turn these findings into widespread health benefits, as well as a big opportunity for our agri-food sector. BBSRC’s long-term, strategic funding for the John Innes Centre is the key reason these prospects are now in our sights.”

Dr Jonathan Clarke, Head of Business Development, John Innes Centre

BBSRC helps put the pea into diabetes prevention

New app to help measure emotional wellbeing and quality of life of farm animals

Scotland’s Rural College collaborated with Waitrose to produce and roll out a new mobile app that will help assess farm animal behaviour.

The app is based on Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA), allowing users to record specific animal behaviours that are indicative of an animal’s mood and well-being. The introduction will also help Waitrose field teams develop skills in assessing animal behaviour and expressions. Currently, the app can be used for dairy cows, veal calves, pigs, laying hens, broiler chickens and ducks.

Data from different farms will be integrated and used to assess quality of life. The rollout was funded by the Animal Welfare Research Network, a BBSRC-funded UK network built to achieve greater interaction and cohesion within the animal welfare research community.

“Good physical health is vital for good welfare but there is clear consensus among the scientific animal welfare community that factors such as enjoyment, contentment and positive excitement play an equally vital role in ensuring that an animal has a good life. QBA not only provides a way to assess these factors, it also opens up the conversation about what positive emotional wellbeing for an animal truly looks like.”

Professor Francoise Wemelsfelder, Senior Researcher, Animal Welfare, Scotland’s Rural College

Waitrose Press Release – Moo-ving on app

Liverpool-led Enhanced Infectious Diseases database (EID2) finds 40x more high-risk host species for new coronaviruses

With BBSRC funding, a University of Liverpool research team has developed the Enhanced Infectious Diseases (EID2) database, which collates and stores existing data on pathogens and their hosts.

In 2021, EID2 data was used to predict potential sources of new coronaviruses. When more than one subtype of coronavirus infects a host, they can potentially swap genetic information to produce a new type of coronavirus. EID2 data was integrated into machine learning, which enabled the prediction of hosts of multiple coronaviruses, finding 40-fold more host species with four or more subtypes of coronaviruses than were previously observed.

The data shows an under-appreciation of the scale of coronavirus generation, as well as highlighting high-risk host species.

“EID2 data is automatically and continuously updated, representing our current knowledge of pathogens across the tree of life. We can use the data to predict future spill-over events to humans, domesticated animals and crops, pathogen sharing between wild animals, and can identify spill-over hotspots and locations of future emergence.”

Dr Maya Wardeh, BBSRC/MRC NPIF Research Fellow, University of Liverpool

Joining the dots between climate change, livestock systems and zoonotic disease in Tanzania

Research, led by Professor Sarah Cleaveland at the University of Glasgow, has found new links between climate change and zoonoses, revealing significant human health, social and economic impacts. Zoonoses are infectious diseases that occur when a pathogen, like a virus or a bacterium, ‘jump’ from an animal into humans.

The research demonstrated how an interdisciplinary and inclusive approach demonstrated that climate change was key to why pastoral communities had shifted from farming cattle to sheep or goats. It also highlighted the impact of that change, with the potential for new disease outbreaks. The team are now working with local policy makers and the communities to co-develop suitable interventions.

Joining the dots between climate change livestock systems and zoonotic disease in Tanzania case study

New non-invasive test uses AI to detect Bovine TB in milk

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is an aggressive disease that massively impacts the health of dairy cow herds globally and costs the UK around £175 million every year.

Now, researchers at Scotland’s Rural University College have led the development of a high-tech test for the disease.

They have developed a new, non-invasive method that uses artificial intelligence and infrared spectrometry to detect bTB in milk.

The project also involved partners from: NVIDIA, National Milk Records, the Animal and Plant Health Agency, and the British Cattle Movement Service.

The research has been funded by BBSRC and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

NVIDIA Solution Showcase: Protecting the herd

Ground-breaking discovery of root mechanism could lead to better crop yields

Heavy modern farming equipment can cause soil compaction – when pressure compacts soil to the extent that plant roots cannot penetrate, stopping them from efficiently absorbing water and nutrients and resulting in reduced yields. About 65 million hectares of land are affected globally.

Dr Bipin Pandey, BBSRC Discovery Fellow at The University of Nottingham, in collaboration with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, has discovered how crops detect compacted soils. Using an imaging technique called X-ray microCT, Dr Pandey discovered that some plant roots produce a gaseous signal called ethylene, which accumulates in roots growing in compacted soil. Roots of ethylene insensitive plants were able to punch through compacted soil, unlike ethylene sensitive plants.

Dr Pandey’s research highlights ethylene insensitivity and, in turn, compaction resistance as a crucial new selective breeding trait. The team are now working to pinpoint the key genes involved in this mechanism to allow the re-engineering of important crops, like wheat and tomato, to become compaction resistant.

“The new knowledge generated about ethylene controlling root responses to soil compaction promises to be transformative for generating new crop varieties with improved abilities to penetrate hard soils.”

Dr Bipin Pandey, BBSRC Discovery Fellow, University of Nottingham

Open data key to cracking the protein structure prediction problem

A new artificial intelligence programme called AlphaFold has been shown to accurately predict protein structure in minutes, solving a 50-year old challenge. Its success is built on the availability of thousands of experimentally determined protein structures, a result of long-term research funding, infrastructure investment and data-sharing.

Open data key to cracking the protein structure prediction problem

Synthetic biology technique creates colour without costing the Earth

OpenPlant is a joint initiative between the University of Cambridge, the John Innes Centre and the Earlham Institute, funded by BBSRC and the EPSRC as part of the UK Synthetic Biology for Growth programme. The goal is to use plant synthetic biology for the improvement of sustainable agriculture and conservation.

Established in 2016, Colorifix was founded by two synthetic biologists, including OpenPlant Principle Investigator Dr Jim Ajioka, now Chief Scientific Officer of Colorifix. Colorifix uses a synthetic biology approach, part of which was developed through OpenPlant, to produce, deposit and fix pigments onto textiles, reducing the impact of the dyeing industry on the environment. The team find a colour created by an organism in nature, then, via online DNA sequencing, pinpoint the genes involved in the production of the pigment. That DNA code is translated into their microorganisms, which can then not only produce the pigment but also transfer the colour onto textiles.

This dyeing method developed by Colorifix is sustainable, eliminating the use of all hazardous chemicals and reducing waste, energy and water consumption.

In summer 2021 Colorifix was

• invited to showcase their technology in the Fabrica X innovation gallery
• a named finalist in the Europas in the Sustainability Tech category
• launched as part of a capsule collection with global fashion brand H&M.

Colorifix established itself at Norwich Research Park in 2018 and since then has benefitted from collaborations with the Earlham Institute, Quadram Institute and the Metabolomics Group within the John Innes Centre – all three are Institutes strategically funded by BBSRC. 

“Open source methods have been a cornerstone for the Cambridge synthetic biology community as exemplified by Professor Jim Haseloff’s OpenPlant initiative. At Colorifix, we have adopted the open-source DNA assembly procedure developed in the Haseloff lab as our core method for building pigment pathways. It has proven to be a robust and reliable way to generate a wide variety of colours. We hope our experience at Colorifix will encourage other synthetic biology companies to use, develop and share open source methods for the wider community.”

Dr Jim Ajioka, Chief Scientific Officer, Colorifix

Meet the Researcher Professor Frank Sargent

Professor of Microbial Biotechnology and Associate Dean (Research & Innovation) at Newcastle University and Deputy Chair, BBSRC Strategic Longer and Larger grant Committee. Frank’s work focuses on bacterial protein secretion and bacterial hydrogen metabolism.

Can you tell us about your recently published work detailing a novel biological solution for carbon capture?

We were studying a bacterial enzyme that makes hydrogen and carbon dioxide as products. It contains unusual metals, including nickel and molybdenum, so right up my street. Reading books and papers on the evolution of bioenergetics, we began to wonder if the enzyme could be harnessed for the reverse reaction – the capture of carbon dioxide. BBSRC funded our project and we have been able to use engineered bacteria to capture carbon dioxide in an efficient and sustainable way.

What was key to you developing this novel solution?

A few years ago, I had a chance meeting with industrialists at a BBSRC Networks in Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy workshop. These networks are great. At that time, carbon capture research was either going in a different direction or being shelved altogether. The mix of expertise in the network reminded me that scientists were supposed to enjoy experimenting with new ideas and that biology still had a lot to offer in this space.

Why is investment in fundamental bioscience research important?

Without fundamental new discoveries about how life works – especially at the molecular level – we can never make big advances in biotechnology or biomedicine. For example, everyone knows the acronym ‘PCR’ now (polymerase chain reaction) – but it would have been impossible to invent that without basic research into how microbial life exists in extreme environments. Certainly, the more we understand about the natural world, the greater the opportunities for innovation. The benefits may not be obvious immediately – research and data may mature for many years before an application becomes obvious. But it is a long-game worth playing.

How cells measure themselves

Scientists at the John Innes Centre have used a combination of biology and mathematical modelling to discover how cells regulate their size.

How cells measure themselves | John Innes Centre (jic.ac.uk)

A role for non-coding DNA in biodiversity

Genomics has opened unprecedented opportunities to understand the genetic mechanisms of evolution. The Earlham Institute, together with the University of East Anglia and Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, has been studying how over 1,000 species of cichlid fish with a wide variety of shapes, colourations and behaviours diverged in only 2-3 million years from common ancestors in the East African Rift lakes.

They found this dramatic increase in biodiversity is explained by ‘genetic rewiring’ of regions of the genome that regulate gene activity. Understanding if similar evolutionary innovations underpin traits like temperature-tolerance or salt-tolerance in farmed fish could guide breeding efforts, with potential impact for greater food security in a changing environment.

Genetic rewiring behind spectacular evolutionary explosion in East Africa | Earlham Institute

Antibiotic regulation in soil bacteria revealed

The World Health Organisation has declared antibiotic resistance as one of the biggest threats to global health. Most antibiotics are extracted from soil bacteria cultivated in laboratories. However, many bacteria contain genes that code for antibiotic production, which remain switched off in these conditions. Researchers at the University of Warwick and Monash University investigated the role that the small hormone-like molecule AHFCA plays in controlling the production of methylenomycin antibiotics in the Actinobacterium Streptomyces coelicolor.

The team established how AHFCA controls methylenomycin production by way of a protein intermediary. This discovery has potential for exploitation across the actinobacteria, providing a potential route to discover new antibiotics.

Soil bacteria hormone discovery provides fertile ground for new antibiotics (warwick.ac.uk)