• 2018 close

The automotive industry is being encouraged to cut emissions from cars, with OEMs threatened with penalties if they do not meet targets. One way of achieving this is to make vehicles lighter. Reducing the weight of a small family car by 5% can lead to increased fuel efficiency of 2% . Conventional car seats can weigh up to 35kg each , whereas Gordon Murray Design’s composite iStream® seat weighs only 12kg, potentially a huge weight saving. The manufacture of composite car seats has traditionally been expensive due to their unsuitability for mass production but the revolutionary iStream® manufacturing process overturns this convention, utilising a composite sandwich panel structure and metallic frame combination, which costs no more than a conventional car seat. Reducing the weight is also of benefit to electric vehicles (EVs) as well as internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, lower weight means lower emissions and for EVs it means greater range for a given battery size or a smaller (cheaper) battery for a given range, both of which are very desirable for customers. The principal objective of the The Productionisation of Advanced Modular Passenger Autonomous Seating (PAMPAS) project is to fully understand all aspects of the industrialisation process to ensure the already technically proven seating system can enter into series production with a commercially viable proposition.

The protozoan parasites Trypanosoma brucei, Trypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania spp. are the causative agents of neglected tropical diseases. They rely on surface glycans, chains of sugar units attached to proteins and lipids, for their survival and infectivity. These surface glycans are synthesized by enzymes called glycosyltransferases located in the secretory pathway. However, contrary to this canonical model of glycan synthesis and surface expression, our group has recently described the presence of an essential glycosyltransferase, a fucosyltransferase, in the mitochondrion of T. brucei. A similar putative fucosyltransferase gene, called TcFUT1, has been found in the genome of T. cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas’ disease, endemic in the Americas. We aim to obtain recombinant, active TcFUT1 protein in order to analyse its enzymatic activity, define its preferred substrate(s) in vitro, design assays for compound screening and to raise antibodies against it for immuno-localisation. In parallel, we also aim to define its essentiality and characterise its endogenous substrates. This work will provide an opportunity to uncover the function(s) of this novel mitochondrial fucosyltransferase and provide a much-needed drug target for Chagas’ disease.

Phantom limb pain (PLP) is a debilitating condition, occurring after limb amputation. Traditionally, PLP is thought to be driven by maladaptive plasticity in the sensorimotor cortex1. However, treatment associated with such neural hypotheses (e.g. mirror-box therapy) report limited success. Study 1) Plasticity in the neighbouring body part to the deprived hand region, and its relationship to phantom limb pain: this study aims to address the extent of maladaptive plasticity after amputation and it's association to phantom pain. Study 2) How does impaired sensorimotor control influence the processing of nociception?: this study aims to use a reinforcement learning model (which models predictions and prediction errors) in the context of an active nociceptive learning task, thereby addressing study 1-3 below. Study 3) Peripheral and central contributions to phantom sensation: here we are using peripheral (highly-detailed EMG electrode arrays) and central (MRI) correlates of phantom sensations and looking at their relative contributions to phantom perception.