We are trying to understand how proteins called antibodies and the cells that make them work to protect against Salmonella infections. This should help improve vaccines against Salmonella and other bacteria since nearly all vaccines work via antibody. Salmonella infections can have deadly consequences killing hundreds of thousands around the world yearly. In some cases if Salmonella is found in an infant’s blood then that child has a near 25% chance of dying. Salmonella travels through the blood to infect and grow in many sites such as the liver or spleen. Yet the body is not defenceless against this spread because antibodies can bind Salmonella and lead to its killing. But to be effective the antibody needs to be present before the infection and this can be achieved by vaccination. Using a mouse model, since these complex events cannot be effectively mimicked in other systems, we have found that antibodies to some Salmonella proteins can prevent infection and may help us design an effective, safe vaccine. Since these Salmonella proteins and the cells that make the antibody have some unusual properties we hope that these studies may help us better understand how we fight bacteria and then use this information to design vaccines to other bacterial diseases.

Ayurveda is ~5000 years old healing science which was originated from India with the concept of use of natural ingredients for health purposes such as curcumin, quercetin etc. Ayurvedic bioactive compounds (ABC) can potentially be used to control chronic health problems such as obesity by the targeted and controlled release of bioactives. The use of these bioactives in complex food products is limited as they are sensitive to various factors such as pH, temperature etc. Recent advancement in application of nanotechnology to food product development offers an opportunity to allow enriching food products with bioactive molecules isolated from ayurveda or any other medicine system by applying the learnings developed for pharmaceutical nano drug delivery technology, in particular “nanocrystals technology”. The project has two interrelated objectives: (1) fabrication of nanocrystals of ABC to modulate solubility, wettability etc.; (2) use of these nanocrystals as edible Pickering particles to control emulsion functionality (stability, rhelogy, and digestibility). As the particles will be used for stabilization, and also as bioactive (i.e. dual functionality) this system will be unique. The interfacial layer of ABC will allow the control of the emulsion functionality without using high concentration of emulsifiers which are generally used to stabilize emulsions. Fatty acids in emulsion will help improve the bioavailability of ABC. Success in this project will seed and lead the development of innovative formulation strategy for healthy food product development by reducing the use of synthetic emulsifiers (PGPR) thus impacting on consumers and industry. This will be possible by combining the pharmaceutical drug delivery technology expertise of the experienced researcher with the food delivery expertise and more engineering oriented approach of the supervisor with the intersectoral collaboration between University of Birmingham & Unilever, Netherlands.

The evolutionary success of the most diverse group of land vertebrates, birds, largely lies in their ability to fly. Spectacular fossils have demonstrated that birds are paravian dinosaurs; the only representatives to survive the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Extinct paravians close to the dinosaur–bird transition show diverse skeletal and plumage morphologies, suggesting substantial variability in aerial skills. However, locomotor skills (e.g. running, flying) and related morphologies can change drastically through ontogeny in modern birds depending on the developmental strategy followed along the precocial (functional maturity at hatching, including various degrees of locomotor capability) to altricial (functional immaturity with embryo-like hatchlings) spectrum. This ontogenetic aspect of flight remains elusive in extinct bird-like dinosaurs, greatly encumbering research on flight origins. We aim to explore for the first time how bone tissue reflects precocial and altricial locomotor development, including the ontogenetic onset of powered flight, by studying limb bone shafts of growth series of modern birds, and apply these findings to bird-like dinosaurs. We will test correlation in a phylogenetic context between quantified limb bone histological traits and different developmental strategies in birds using thin sections and µCT data. These will provide a firm baseline for fossil inferences using the same approach and will generate a step-change in understanding the ontogenetic factor in the evolution of flight through the dinosaur to bird transition. The experienced researcher and hosts will bring together and integrate respective expertise in biology and palaeontology to deliver this highly innovative, timely, and multidisciplinary project that will broaden our view on how birds have mastered the skies for the last 150 million years.