News in brief
Plant research could bear fruit
Leeds biologists are investigating how to control when plants flower to help farmers reap a bumper harvest.
A research team led by Professor Brendan Davies, director of the Centre for Plant Sciences, has been awarded £288,000 through the EU to examine how minute changes in the way genes are expressed in plants can have a huge impact on when they flower.
“Everything we eat comes from flowering plants – even the food fed to livestock. This means that the long-term future of the world’s food supply would be greatly enhanced if we could predict and control flowering,” says Professor Davies.
Read more online at http://tinyurl.com/n8nt24
The frontline of antibiotics
Scientists from the universities of Leeds and York have been awarded £3.3 million from the BBSRC to study a group of proteins that are highly effective at killing bacteria – and could hold the key to developing new types of antibiotics.
The team, which includes Professor Sheena Radford (Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology), want to find out how proteins known as colicins force their way into bacterial cells before destroying them.
“It’s as though the colicins are carrying the equivalent of hand grenades which they can deploy without harming themselves,” says Professor Radford. For more see http://tinyurl.com/lj5cww
Use your screen saver
Using the screen saver on your computer will save energy and protect your identity.
To protect your email, files and systems from unauthorised access, always use your screen saver with password protection enabled. This means that if you leave your computer idle for more than a few minutes, it will automatically lock down.
Your screen saver should also be set to a blank display (no still or moving images) – this could halve the amount of energy your computer uses when you’re not using it.
For further advice, please contact your local IT support person or the ISS helpdesk, phone ext. 33333.
