ChELSI: Chemical Engineering Life Science Interface
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Sheffield
Department Name: Chemical & Biological Engineering
Abstract
In the United States and countries such as Singapore and Korea, chemical engineers collaborate extensively with biologists at what is termed the Life Science Interface. In the United Kingdom, such collaborations are worryingly few in numbers. We propose to establish a research centre - ChELSI, where Chemical Engineers will work at the Life Science Interface. ChELSI's purpose is to build a centre of excellence in its own right and to reach out to the whole UK chemical engineering community.ChELSI will be based in the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Sheffield. At the core of ChELSI will be existing staff from the Biological and Environmental Systems Group bolstered by new appointments - 3 lecturers, 3 PDRAs, 3 PhD students, 2 technicians and administrative support. The University of Sheffield will contribute to ChELSI by providing 1000 m2 of new laboratories, offices and an ideas space . In this bid we seek funds to support the 11 research staff for five years and to provide laboratory equipment and consumables and small amounts of funding to enable pump-priming of external collaborations.Our vision for ChELSI is that it will be focused on problems of relevance to human health. We propose initial projects in the areas of stem cells and regenerative medicine, kidney diseases, reproductive biology and protein aggregation. However the staff resources we propose should be much more broadly oriented and propose that these be in three thematic areas: (1) analytical techniques underpinning - omic measurement (2) multi-scale modelling and (3) metabolic engineering. These individuals will contribute to our exemplar projects, initiate their own activity and provide a vital source of expertise for reaching out to new collaborators. The concept of ChELSI is that it will be outward looking. To ensure success it must bridge to the life science community and the UK chemical engineering community. This concept is embedded in every level of what we plan: from the layout of the new facilities, with its ideas space , to our portal concept, our hub-and-spoke model for use of facilities, our multi-level communications plan and the membership of our advisory panel.At the end of the five years funding sought with this bid, we expect ChELSI to be a thriving centre of excellence for chemical engineering at the life science interface. More than 25 individuals will work in Sheffield with the costs of the lecturers and technicians borne by the University. Further there will be active links to other chemical engineering departments in the UK and beyond where chemical engineers have become involved in life-science work, in part we hope, because of ChELSI. The net result of this collection of engineers taking their skills to another problem set will be added vitality in their discipline in the UK, the emergence of the UK as the lead competitor to the USA in this field and emergence of quantitative systems level analysis as a routine tool in UK life science research.Given the rate of progress in life science tools and knowledge, we argue that if investment is not made now, the UK will not bridge the gap to the US, chemical engineering here will diverge in nature from other leading countries and UK biologists will either not have access to these skills or will have to seek them overseas.
Publications
Pereira-Medrano AG
(2010)
Rapid fabrication of glass/PDMS hybrid µIMER for high throughput membrane proteomics.
in Lab on a chip
Pereira-Medrano AG
(2007)
A systematic evaluation of chip-based nanoelectrospray parameters for rapid identification of proteins from a complex mixture.
in Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry
Pereira-Medrano AG
(2013)
Quantitative proteomic analysis of the exoelectrogenic bacterium Arcobacter butzleri ED-1 reveals increased abundance of a flagellin protein under anaerobic growth on an insoluble electrode.
in Journal of proteomics
Peter S
(2012)
Proteomic analysis of the impact of static culturing on the expansion of rat bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells.
in Biotechnology letters
Peter S
(2013)
Comparative study of in vitro expansion of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells.
in Biotechnology letters
Pewsey E
(2010)
Nuclear proteome dynamics in differentiating embryonic carcinoma (NTERA-2) cells.
in Journal of proteome research
Pewsey E
(2009)
Proteomics analysis of epithelial cells reprogrammed in cell-free extract.
in Molecular & cellular proteomics : MCP
Pham T
(2010)
A quantitative proteomic analysis of biofilm adaptation by the periodontal pathogen Tannerella forsythia
in PROTEOMICS - Clinical Applications
Pham T
(2008)
Proteomic Analysis of Calcium Alginate-Immobilized Saccharomyces cerevisiae under High-Gravity Fermentation Conditions
in Journal of Proteome Research
Pham TK
(2010)
Quantitative proteomic analysis of Sulfolobus solfataricus membrane proteins.
in Journal of proteome research
Pham TK
(2010)
A quantitative proteomic analysis of biofilm adaptation by the periodontal pathogen Tannerella forsythia.
in Proteomics
Pham TK
(2007)
Proteomic analysis of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
in Expert review of proteomics
Pham TK
(2008)
The proteomic response of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in very high glucose conditions with amino acid supplementation.
in Journal of proteome research
Pinto F
(2012)
Construction of a chassis for hydrogen production: physiological and molecular characterization of a Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 mutant lacking a functional bidirectional hydrogenase.
in Microbiology (Reading, England)
Pinto F
(2015)
Improving a Synechocystis-based photoautotrophic chassis through systematic genome mapping and validation of neutral sites.
in DNA research : an international journal for rapid publication of reports on genes and genomes
Qiu W
(2020)
Phosphopeptide enrichment for phosphoproteomic analysis - A tutorial and review of novel materials.
in Analytica chimica acta
Qiu W
(2017)
Natural Mutagenesis-Enabled Global Proteomic Study of Metabolic and Carbon Source Implications in Mutant Thermoacidophillic Archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus PBL2025.
in Journal of proteome research
Radrich K
(2010)
Integration of metabolic databases for the reconstruction of genome-scale metabolic networks.
in BMC systems biology
Raut M
(2019)
Alcoholic fermentation of thermochemical and biological hydrolysates derived from Miscanthus biomass by Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824
in Biomass and Bioenergy
Raut MP
(2016)
Quantitative proteomic analysis of the influence of lignin on biofuel production by Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824.
in Biotechnology for biofuels
Reimann J
(2013)
Archaeal signal transduction: impact of protein phosphatase deletions on cell size, motility, and energy metabolism in Sulfolobus acidocaldarius.
in Molecular & cellular proteomics : MCP
Robert FO
(2010)
Exploiting cyanobacterial P450 pathways.
in Current opinion in microbiology
Ruiz Álvarez J
(2023)
Quantitative proteomic analysis of heifer serum at the peri-implantation period using two complementary methods
in Reproduction, Fertility and Development
Salim M
(2007)
Characterization of fibrinogen adsorption onto glass microcapillary surfaces by ELISA.
in Lab on a chip
Salim M
(2007)
Non-fouling microfluidic chip produced by radio frequency tetraglyme plasma deposition.
in Lab on a chip
Salim M
(2012)
A solvation-based screening approach for metabolite arrays.
in The Analyst
Salim M
(2011)
Towards proteomics-on-chip: the role of the surface.
in Molecular bioSystems
Salim M
(2012)
A selective metabolite array for the detection of phosphometabolites.
in Analytica chimica acta
Salim M
(2009)
Studies of electroosmotic flow and the effects of protein adsorption in plasma-polymerized microchannel surfaces.
in Electrophoresis
Sanguinetti G
(2008)
MMG: a probabilistic tool to identify submodules of metabolic pathways.
in Bioinformatics (Oxford, England)
Scaife MA
(2009)
Characterization of cyanobacterial beta-carotene ketolase and hydroxylase genes in Escherichia coli, and their application for astaxanthin biosynthesis.
in Biotechnology and bioengineering
Scaife MA
(2012)
Comparative analysis of ß-carotene hydroxylase genes for astaxanthin biosynthesis.
in Journal of natural products
Scaife MA
(2012)
A high-throughput screen for the identification of improved catalytic activity: ß-carotene hydroxylase.
in Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.)
Sekar R
(2012)
Bacterial water quality and network hydraulic characteristics: a field study of a small, looped water distribution system using culture-independent molecular methods.
in Journal of applied microbiology
Sethi D
(2020)
Diatoms for Carbon Sequestration and Bio-Based Manufacturing.
in Biology
Shuhaili F
(2023)
Nitrate and phosphate uptake dynamics in two halotolerant strains of Chlorella vulgaris is differentially influenced by carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus supply
in Chemical Engineering Journal
Slocombe SP
(2021)
Enabling large-scale production of algal oil in continuous output mode.
in iScience
Snijders AP
(2007)
Relative quantification of proteins across the species boundary through the use of shared peptides.
in Journal of proteome research
Snijders AP
(2010)
Analysis of arginine and lysine methylation utilizing peptide separations at neutral pH and electron transfer dissociation mass spectrometry.
in Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry
Snijders AP
(2008)
Characterization of post-translational modifications of the linker histones H1 and H5 from chicken erythrocytes using mass spectrometry.
in Journal of proteome research
Stansfield S
(2006)
Dynamic analysis of GS-NS0 cells producing a recombinant monoclonal antibody during fed-batch culture
in Biotechnology and Bioengineering
Stensjö K
(2007)
An iTRAQ-based quantitative analysis to elaborate the proteomic response of Nostoc sp. PCC 7120 under N2 fixing conditions.
in Journal of proteome research
Strutton B
(2018)
Producing a glycosylating Escherichia coli cell factory: The placement of the bacterial oligosaccharyl transferase pglB onto the genome.
in Biochemical and biophysical research communications
Strutton B
(2019)
Engineering Pathways in Central Carbon Metabolism Help to Increase Glycan Production and Improve N-Type Glycosylation of Recombinant Proteins in E. coli.
in Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland)
Sydney T
(2018)
The Effect of High-Intensity Ultraviolet Light to Elicit Microalgal Cell Lysis and Enhance Lipid Extraction.
in Metabolites
Tee KL
(2013)
Polishing the craft of genetic diversity creation in directed evolution.
in Biotechnology advances
Tee KL
(2017)
An Efficient Transformation Method for the Bioplastic-Producing "Knallgas" Bacterium Ralstonia eutropha H16.
in Biotechnology journal
Description | The research funded has enabled the establishment of expertise and facilities for advancing analytical techniques underpinning omic characterisations, in particular quantitative proteomics and metabolomics, multi-scale modelling and metabolic engineering, several upstream developments in biomanufacturing impacting on biopharmaceutical, chemical, water, energy and agricultural sectors. These have been used to initiate several projects with life science faculties across the country and beyond, as is evidenced by representative further funding (given elsewhere) that this award has contributed in attracting. It has helped further our interactions with the bio-industry, in particular the bio-pharmaceutical and agricultural sector. The research activities have informed teaching in the Department, resulting in incorporation of life science principles and concepts in chemical engineering curriculum , broadly evidenced by a change in the name of the department from "Chemical & Process Engineering" to "Chemical & Biological Engineering". It has resulted in the establishment of a Masters programme in Biological & Bioprocess Engineering to attract life science graduates to upgrade their education with Chemical Engineering fundamentals. In addition, challenges and concepts in life sciences are taught to undergraduate and post-graduate engineering students in the department to enable and prepare a UK workforce for tomorrow capable of interacting with biologists and addressing the challenges presented by Life Sciences in the Life Science Interface. |
Exploitation Route | The expertise developed using the grant will impact in the education of chemical engineers who will be trained in the challenges of working in the life science interface, as is required, for example, in the burgeoning bio-manufacturing industry with relevance to a wide variety of sectors, such as healthcare, biopharmaceuticals, agriculture, food, environment, energy, bio-based chemicals, etc. The facilities that this grant has helped establish can be used in developing systems level characterisation of biological systems towards developing an understanding of underlying metabolism and developing processes with impact in several of the sectors mentioned above. |
Sectors | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Chemicals,Education,Energy,Environment,Healthcare,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology |
URL | https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/cbe |
Description | The grant has been instrumental in bringing the life sciences interface into chemical engineering education and research at Sheffield, which was the primary vision. This is clearly demonstrated by a change in the name of the associated department from "Chemical & Process Engineering" to "Chemical & Biological Engineering", reflecting the various educational and research activities that the department currently focuses on. The facilities and personnel that the grant helped us attract have been instrumental in developing future Chemical Engineers who are well aware of the challenges they need to address in applying their skill sets to find solutions in the life sciences interface. The grant has been instrumental in initiating and establishing collaborations with life scientists and bio-based industry, contributing to the economic competitiveness of the UK. The grant has enabled establishment of 11 academic members of staff (25% of the department) directly working in the Life Science interface, creating economic and societal impact. It has so far enabled attraction of research income to the tune of GBP 80M (~50M directly apportioned to the department, including 8M from Industry) to create economic and societal impact. It has enabled interactions with Life Science Industries, such as Biogen Idec Ltd., Lonza, Medimmune, Pfizer, Syngenta, etc., to spur economic activity in the UK and beyond. It has enabled interactions with Life Scientists in the UK and abroad (for example, Wageningen Uni, Netherlands, UCL Berkley, USA and Vilnius Univertsity, Lithuania, Bharathidasan University, India) for creating impact. |
First Year Of Impact | 2008 |
Sector | Agriculture, Food and Drink,Chemicals,Education,Energy,Environment,Healthcare,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology |
Impact Types | Societal,Economic,Policy & public services |
Description | BBSRC ALERT14 |
Amount | £400,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | BB/M012166/1 |
Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2015 |
End | 12/2015 |
Description | Chinese Scholarship Council |
Amount | £10,000 (GBP) |
Funding ID | 2009623024 |
Organisation | Chinese Scholarship Council |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | China |
Start |
Description | Engineering new capacities for solar energy utilisation in bacteria |
Amount | £3,380,116 (GBP) |
Funding ID | BB/M000265/1 |
Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 02/2015 |
End | 12/2021 |
Description | Enhanced Biofuel Production via Integrated Microbubble Technology |
Amount | £932,491 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/N011511/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2016 |
End | 07/2019 |
Description | Marie-Sklodowska Curie Fellowship |
Amount | € 195,000 (EUR) |
Funding ID | 661063 - EQUIP |
Organisation | Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | Global |
Start | 05/2015 |
End | 04/2017 |
Description | Sustainable Bioenergy from biomass |
Amount | £2,000,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 11/2013 |
End | 10/2016 |
Description | The Biogenesis, Structure and Function of Biological Membranes |
Amount | £3,514,959 (GBP) |
Funding ID | BB/G021546/1 |
Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 11/2009 |
End | 02/2015 |
Title | Dissolved inorganic carbon speciation in aquatic environments |
Description | A method was proposed for the assay of DIC speciation in aquatic environments. |
Type Of Material | Biological samples |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | Impact is notable in our research group. Yet to notice impact elsewhere. Likely areas of impact are in Marine science and in algal biotechnology practice. |
Title | iTRAQ based proteomic methodology |
Description | Methodology for quantitative proteomics in microalgae were developed using hydrophobic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC). |
Type Of Material | Biological samples |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | Notable impact has been seen within the research group and department. Yet to see notable changes elsewhere. |
Title | Seminal fluid protein divergence among populations exhibiting postmating prezygotic reproductive isolation |
Description | Despite holding a central role for fertilisation success, reproductive traits often show elevated rates of evolution and diversification. The rapid evolution of seminal fluid proteins (Sfps) within populations is predicted to cause mis-signalling between the male ejaculate and female reproductive tract between populations resulting in postmating prezygotic (PMPZ) isolation. Crosses between populations of Drosophila montana show PMPZ isolation in the form of reduced fertilisation success in both noncompetitive and competitive contexts. Here we test whether male ejaculate proteins deriving from either the accessory glands or the ejaculatory bulb differ between populations using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. We find more than 150 differentially abundant proteins between populations which may contribute to PMPZ isolation. These proteins include a number of proteases and peptidases, and several orthologs of D. melanogaster Sfps, all known to mediate fertilisation success and which mimic PMPZ isolation phenotypes. Males of one population typically produced greater quantities of Sfps and the strongest PMPZ isolation occurs in this direction. The accessory glands and ejaculatory bulb have different functions and the ejaculatory bulb contributes more to population differences than the accessory glands. Proteins with a secretory signal, but not Sfps, evolve faster than non-secretory proteins although the conservative criteria used to define Sfps may have impaired the ability to identify rapidly evolving proteins. We take advantage of quantitative proteomics data from three Drosophila species to determine shared and unique functional enrichments of Sfps that could be subject to selection between taxa and subsequently mediate PMPZ isolation. Our study provides the first high throughput quantitative proteomic evidence showing divergence of reproductive proteins implicated in the emergence of PMPZ isolation between populations. |
Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
Year Produced | 2020 |
Provided To Others? | Yes |
URL | http://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.pvmcvdnhw |
Description | China research |
Organisation | State Oceanic Administration |
Department | Third Institute of Oceanography |
Country | China |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Initiate collaborative dialogue through project student, resulting in joint publication (no formal collaboration yet). |
Collaborator Contribution | Initiate collaborative dialogue through project student, resulting in joint publication. |
Impact | 2 joint publications so far. There has been an initiation of dialogue but no formal collaboration, multi-disciplinary - Engineering and ocean sciences/oceanography. |
Start Year | 2015 |