Month: July 2024

Important little things (atoms, genes and molecules) to solve grand challenges

Over summer, IMSE welcomes undergraduate students to spend a day working side to side with our Operations team. They help us explore new topics in the field of molecular science and engineering and draft questions for upcoming podcasts. In July, Polly Dean (Biology) and Manya Bhargava (Physics) combined their interest in plant science, quantum physics and genetics to write a blog exploring the interaction between these fields and the wide range of applications.

Quantum mechanics is a branch of Physics which describes the behaviour of  subatomic particles (electrons, protons, neutrons). Genetic engineering is a method in Biology research which alters an organism’s characteristics by manipulating its genetic material. Despite their different definitions, both influence processes that control molecular interactions. Bringing together their knowledge on Biology and Physics, Polly and Manya explored examples where the combination of both disciplines (quantum and genetics) is solving global grand challenges. These include applying molecular aspects of photosynthesis to renewable energy systems, and increasing our understanding of immune responses for vaccine development.

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Injecting Hope – Vaccine development in a pandemic

Earlier this June, people at Imperial College London had the opportunity to hear from a scientist who affected all our lives, Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert from the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford. The Department of Life Sciences hosted Prof Gilbert for the Sir Ernst Chain lecture, a celebration of the late biochemist who developed the techniques to isolate and produce Penicillin, together with Howard Florey and Alexander Fleming.

Prof Gilbert works on viral vector vaccines. In 2020 she led the group who, together with Astra Zeneca, developed and produced one of the Covid-19 vaccines. The Oxford/Astra Zeneca (ChAdOx1 nCov-19) vaccine was used in 180 countries. It is estimated to have saved over 6 million lives in the first year it was used!

Our guest blogger, Arabella Heath wrote a blog post about her talk and how combination of molecular science and engineering was crucial for vaccine development in a pandemic.

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