Hello
We are an EPR spectroscopy group based at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, UK. We specialise in measuring nanometre distances between pairs of paramagnetic centres and relating these back to the structure of biological systems. We are keen to develop the methodology too. Please have a browse, and e-mail if you want to know more.
What have we been up to?
Anokhi is spending the week at the Diamond Light Source with our collaborator Dr Anna Peacock.
Anokhi is attending and giving an oral presentation at the Rocky Mountain Conference on EPR at Snowbird in Utah this week.
Paper on using EPR to measure distances between two non-covalently bound endohedral fullerenes containing Yttrium atoms accepted by JACS. A collaborative effort between St Andrews, Oxford, London and Lincoln Universities that has been 8 years in the making, but what a beautiful result!
Welcome to Maria Papa who starts her PhD with us today.
Good bye and best wishes for your future to Elise, Rachel and James: It’s been a a pleasure to have you working with us.
We start a Carnegie Trust Research Incentives Grant today.
Anokhi, Ronan and Janet attended the 51st RSC ESR meeting at Queen Mary’s University London.
Janet, Anokhi, Ronan and Rachel spent the day at Sinclairtown Primary School with P4-7 with the Atomic Colour demonstrations.
Janet, Ronan, James, Elise and Rachel and Connor Grose (from Brendon Lovett’s group) demonstrated Atomic Colour, an introduction to quantisation, at the Physics and Astronomy Science Discovery Day (photos can be found in the Public Engagement section).
Janet braved the snow and attended a very enjoyable Junior Honours Year Conference at The Burn in Angus.
Janet helped out over three days at a hands-on physics roadshow for S1 pupils (organised by Prof Ian Bonnell) at Madras College in St Andrews.
Welcome to our project students Rachel Stewart, James Adams and Elise Jacobs who are joining us for the semester.
Janet took part in a STEM Careers Event at Auchmuty High School in Glenrothes.
Welcome to new PhD student Ronan Fisher.
Paper with Alice Bowen, Jeff Harmer, Chris Timmel and others has been accepted by JACS, title: A Structural Model of a P450-Ferredoxin Complex from Orientation-Selective Double Electron-Electron Resonance Spectroscopy. Janet also acted as an external examiner for PhD Defence at the University of Iceland today.
Well done to Claire (henceforth, Dr Motion) who passed her Viva with Dr Maxie Roessler as external examiner. Meanwhile, Janet participated in the BISON H2020 Workshop at UEA in Norwich.
Chemical Society Review Tutorial Review article out today, co-authored with Dr Marius Haugland and Professor Ed Anderson. Highlighted as a HOT article and therefore free to access until 5th January 2018. Also, Dr Graham’s Smith EPSRC funded research grant, with Janet as a Co-I, starts today. Title: Meeting the Sensitivity Grand Challenges in Pulsed Electron Magnetic Resonance.
Janet is attending Spin2017 in Padua and will be presenting the base-independent click labelling of nucleic acids.
Anokhi is in Manchester this week attending an EPR workshop and a mini-symposium.
We welcome Andrew Stewart for a visit from Manchester this week. He is finishing his PhD now and heading off to Emory in the US for a PostDoc with Prof Kurt Warncke. Best wishes!
Janet is in Quebec City for the ISMAR and Rocky Mountain EPR meeting.
Anokhi attending the IUPAB and EBSA biophysical meeting.
Prof Ian Collinson and Dr Robin Corey from the University of Bristol visited.
Paper with Tilo Kunath and Nicola Drummond (Edinburgh, Centre for Regenerative Medicine) has been accepted by Scientific Reports.
Well done and best wishes for the future to Ed Stirrup and Lauren Macleod who handed in their BSc projects today. Keep in touch!
Congratulations again to Claire Motion who won (again!) a poster prize at the RSC ESR conference.
The 50th RSC ESR conference in Oxford this week.
Congratulations to Claire Motion who has had her paper describing the application and use of composite pulses in high field DEER published online by Journal of Magnetic Resonance today.
We made Atomic Explorers of the P5/6/7 classes at Parkhill Primary School in Leven with a new hands on exhibition including kinder eggs, flame tests, spectroscopes, circuits and a game called Escape the Atom! PhD students Anokhi Shah and Connor Grose (from the BWL group) provided invaluable support and the children and teachers were great!
JEL went to The Burn Conference at the weekend with the Junior Honours Year. Lots of great talks and socials and beautiful landscape on the Aberdeenshire/Angus border.
Paper with Tilo Kunath and Nicola Drummond has gone on the BioRxiv. EPR is used to show the relative ability of antioxidants compared to the novel Proxison for radical scavenging. Proxison is then shown to have significant potency at protecting and rescuing damaged neural cells. Available here.
The RSC’s SPR series Electron Paramagnetic Resonance: Volume 25 has been published. This includes a review of the nitroxyl spin label by Marius Haugland, Ed Anderson and JEL.
Congratulations to (Dr) Marius Haugland from Prof Ed Anderson’s group (Oxford) who passed his DPhil viva today.
JEL is a co-organiser, with Prof Takafumi Ueno (Tokyo Institute of Technology), of the 2nd UK-Japan Frontiers of Science Meeting. Exploring cutting edge research across STEM and seeing the common problems and aims. As well as making great friends. The Chemistry/Materials section featured Drs Hiroshi Ishikita (Univ Tokyo), Mio Kondo (IMS, Okazaki) and Libby Gibson (Univ. Newcastle).
Welcome to Ed Stirrup and Lauren Macleod who join the group as project students.
Anokhi and Claire are taking part in the XX-factor at Explorathon at the Byre Theatre tonight!
The Lovett Lab joined twitter: @SpinLovett. Brendon Lovett’s new look website was launched, which may look familiar.
Work with Tom Brown and Ed Anderson’s groups in Oxford which demonstrates new ways to click a wide variety of spin labels onto DNA has been published as a JACS Communication.
Well done to Dr Stacey Bell who graduated today!
Paper on the synthesis of next generation maleimide spin labels has been accepted by SynLett. Big congratulations to Bouchra for this and thanks also to the co-authors: Anokhi, Stacey, Sally Shirran, Catherine Botting, Alex Slawin and Alison Hulme (all authors are women).
On the day that Anokhi handed in her first year report - very well done - JEL visited Queen Anne’s High School, Dunfermline to Speed Network with year S2. Enjoyable and exhausting!
JEL visited Professors Kálai and Sár in Pécs, Hungary. A talk was given, a grand tour of the city was undertaken and JEL got a peek at a few of the 4850 different nitroxides they have made! Thank you to Tamás and Cecilia for hosting so well and to Professor Kálmán Hideg for the invitation.
Claire and JEL took part in the Symmetries in Light exhibition at the Byre Theatre to celebrate the great David Brewster and enjoy hundreds of kaleidoscopes brought over from Japan. A fascinating exhibit which included a kaleidoscope inside a model of a Tapir!
RSC EPR conference in Colchester. Very enjoyable week. JEL gave an invited talk about new methods of spin labelling and Anokhi and Claire presented posters. Claire won a poster prize, well done!
Claire’s paper is out. (not an April Fool)
Claire’s paper, with Stacey and JEL, which discusses the application of composite pulses on HiPER to increase the viability of measuring nitroxide to heme distances, has been accepted by the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. Much deserved Claire!
Anokhi presented her research to 100 11 year olds at the Byre Theatre as part of the XXFactor.
JEL gave a talk to the Chemistry Department at the University of Birmingham and enjoyed meeting and discussing science with Dr Anna Peacock and her student.
JEL attended Parent Carer Scientist event at the Royal Society in London. Many inspirational people there! #AndAScientist
Alice’s paper is out: DOI 10.1039/C5CP06096F
Welcoming Erin Austin into the group for her undergraduate project. She will be using HiPER for orientation selection studies.
MAGIC meeting in Manchester. Good to see such great progress from all the students.
JEL visited Marius Haugland, Edward Anderson and Tom Brown in Oxford. A very productive day!
Happy New Year! Congratulations to the wonderful Alice Bowen who had a paper accepted by PCCP just before Christmas (title: Exploiting orientation-selective DEER: determining molecular structure in systems containing Cu(II) centres; authors: Alice Bowen, Michael Jones, JEL, Thembi Gaule, Mike McPherson, Jon Dilworth, Chris Timmel and Jeff Harmer).
We welcome Andrew Stewart for a visit from Manchester this week.
Congratulations to Stacey Bell for passing her PhD viva today. Examined by Dr Andrea Di Falco and Professor Robert Sim.
Beginning to build the group website now we are in St Andrews.