university of minnesota Archives

Labour force projections: Egypt anticipates a resumption of demographic pressures

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Professor Ragui Assaad researches Egyptian labour force growth as a result of the coming of age of the ‘echo generation’.

Egyptian youths born into the ‘echo generation’ of 2006–2014 are not yet of working age, but when they do enter the labour market there will be a vast increase in the supply of workers. Professor Ragui Assaad, of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota in the US, has been estimating the effects of this increase. […]

Could a serpin antibody help to treat type 1 diabetes?

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Research from Dr Jan Czyzyk and his team at the University of Minnesota, USA, explores the balance between proteases and serpins, and how their activity can in turn affect the inflammation and tissue regeneration of pancreatic islet cells. Their findings show that antibodies can be used to change this serpin–protease balance, with interesting impacts. Excitingly, their research opens the possibility […]

Deeper insights into cell death and survival

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The intricate balance between cell death and survival is essential for normal development and for preventing diseases such as cancer and autoimmunity. Ronald Jemmerson at the University of Minnesota contributed to the seminal discovery that cytochrome c (Cyt c) plays a key role in the onset of apoptosis (programmed cell death). His laboratory also established that leucine-rich alpha-2-glycoprotein-1 (LRG1) binds […]

The intricate world of the centrosome

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Dr Ryoko Kuriyama is a Professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Alongside Dr Cody Fisher, she studies mammalian centrosomes, composite organelles responsible for the segregation of chromosomes during mammalian somatic cell division. Together, Kuriyama and Fisher, with the help of the United States National Science Foundation, investigate the detailed complexity of centrosome maturation, identifying the pericentriolar material protein […]

Human Leukocyte Antigens: The missing link in Alzheimer’s disease etiology

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Viral infections such as the herpes virus have been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease risk.

Alzheimer’s disease is a huge socioeconomic burden in developed countries. Recently, viral infections such as the herpes virus have been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease risk. However, it is unclear what the link between the two is. Professor Lisa M. James of the University of Minnesota, in collaboration with Dr Apostolos Georgopoulos and Dr Spyros Charonis, has utilised computational biology to […]

Configuring new bonds between first-row transition metals

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Professor Lu’s lab seeks to develop homogeneous catalysts for converting abundant small molecules, such as N2 and CO2, into useful chemical feedstocks, such as ammonia and methanol, respectively. The group is interested in creating, understanding and exploiting new chemical bonding.

Transition metals are some of the most important elements in the Periodic Table for their wealth of applications, spanning catalysis to biology. The rich chemistry of the transition metals arises from their remarkable ability to form multiple chemical bonds, a process that is still not fully understood and remains a major challenge in fundamental chemistry. Professor Connie Lu at the […]

Open-source bioinformatic solutions for ‘Big Data’ analysis

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In this research article: Drs Griffin and Jagtap’s research focuses on the Galaxy-P project – developing, testing, optimising and applying multi-omics software tools to a variety of biological questions, including cancer and big data research.

Drs Tim Griffin and Pratik Jagtap along with the Galaxy-P team from the University of Minnesota are working to develop workflows on an open source platform for the analysis of multi-omic data. They are currently focusing on using a Galaxy-based framework to investigate the integration of genomic datasets with mass spectrometry-based ‘omics’ data. But in the long term, they aim […]

Synthetic cells have senses too

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this article is about Prof Liu and Prof Noireaux’s project aim is to construct synthetic cells, consisting of a cell-free expression system encapsulated into a cell-sized phospholipid vesicle, capable of sensing the environment through its lipid bilayer by expressing mechanosensitive channels.

What defines a living cell? How to capture the molecular essence of life? These fundamental questions underpin the collaborative research programme led by Prof Allen Liu at the University of Michigan and Prof Vincent Noireaux at the University of Minnesota. The pair uses molecular components to construct prototypes of synthetic cells displaying the minimal characteristics of life. Their ‘cell analogs’ […]