November: Georges paper published in Frontiers in Immunology and covered on BBCs Science Focus

We were very happy to get Georges paper published in Frontiers in Immunology, given the difficulties of trying to conduct research during Covid. It was a real team effort and everyone from the lab got stuck in and helped out. We demonstrated that when macrophages ( important cells of our immune system) lack one of the key body clock genes, Bmal1, these immune cells feed themselves very differently and consume much more glucose (sugar). This causes the cells to be hyper-inflammatory. Our study sheds further light as to why disruption of our body clocks tends to lead to chronic inflammatory disease.

You can find the research paper here

Coverage by BBC Science focus here

Here is an old picture of George and Mariana (pre-Covid) after they had gotten a good result for the paper.

Both have gone onto great things outside academic research, and we miss them both dearly.

August: Lauren awarded an RCSI Secondment Award to train in University of Dundee

Lauren was awarded an RCSI Secondment Award to head over to chilly Dundee for the winter months, to the Cantrell Laboratory and mentored by the wonderful Dr. Linda Sinclair

Lauren continued her work on understanding how metabolism within chondrocytes affects their function, was able to present her work at the British Society for Immunology Congress, but still had time to catch a bit of rugby !

April: James wins a Fulbright Student Scholarship to visit the lab of Prof. John Hogenesch in the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

James O’Siorain from the Curtis Clock lab was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Irish Student Scholarship to carry out a secondment to the lab of world-renowned circadian biologist, Prof. John Hogenesch from August to December 2021. The Fulbright Awards provides grants for Irish citizens to research, study, or lecture in the USA. The global purpose of this award is to enhance the mutual respect and understanding shared between people. 

James will visit the University of Cincinnati for 4 months from August to December 2021. While away, he will learn a vast number of useful techniques in the design and analysis of circadian systems-biology. In addition to all of the fantastic opportunities afforded him, James looks forward to trying Cincinnati’s famous chili. 

Looking good James :)

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March: Annie speaks on the radio about sleep and daylights saving time

March is a busy time for us circadian biologists

World Sleep Day was in March, and Annie got the opportunity to speak on the radio about the importance of sleep for our health and wellbeing in particular our immune system

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21926499

Ironically :) March is also the month in which we loose an hours sleep as clocks move forward and we begin Daylight Savings Time, Annie also had the opportunity to speak on the radio about the impact of Daylight Savings Time on our biological clocks

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/21931412

February : Shannon presented at the Global Immunometabolism Forum

Shannon had the opportunity to talk about her PhD work “Circadian Disruption Alters the Inflammatory Response in Lung Fibroblasts – Implications for Respiratory Disease” at the Global Immunometabolism Forum organised by Prof. Dave Finlay at Trinity College Dublin. You can see some of the really interesting immunometabolism work that is going on in Ireland on the Immunometabolism Forum Youtube channel here

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtljBRpkZps4H9SGMgwzMZQ/videos

January : Great collaboration with Hurley Group in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on circadian timing of macrophage behaviour

Folks in our laboratory really enjoyed working with Jen Hurleys group at RPI in New York to help with this paper which was published in Genome Research in January. First time the Curtis lab is associated with an “omics” project. A big step :)

you can read about it here

https://news.rpi.edu/content/2021/01/12/immune-system-killer-cells-controlled-circadian-rhythms