The School of Biochemistry and Cell Biology facilitated experiments by BT Young Scientist competitors, Aisling O'Connor and Aisha Ghori from Christ King Girls Secondary School, Douglas, Cork. Aisling and Aisha tell us about their experience.

On Tuesday 26th February, a group of 50 UCC students from third and fourth year biochemistry, 3rd year microbiology and the biotechnology masters, travelled to the Janssen (Johnson&Johnson) plant down in Ringaskiddy. This was as part of an event organised by the UCC Biochemistry and Biotechnology society.

The UCC Biochemistry and Biotechnology Society hosted the annual Eli Lilly undergraduate and postgraduate awards for academic excellence on Tuesday 20th February 2018. 

The conferring ceremony for the MSc Biotechnology and MSc Molecular Cell Biology and Bioinnovation class was held in University College Cork on Thursday 22 February 2018.

On Friday, 23 February 2018, Dr Patrick O’Connor was conferred with his PhD degree and Mr Jayanth Anantha was conferred with a Master of Research. 

The UCC  Biochemistry and Biotechnology Society hosted an information seminar on MSc Programmes in UCC on Tuesday, 30 January 2018.

The fourth year BSc in Biochemistry students, Lorcan Bannon, Orla Brosnan, Denise Burns, Emer Cantillon, Roisin Cassidy, Kevin Foley, Klaudia Juda, Cora Steemers, Peter Townsend and Erika Vasiliauskaite demonstrated a DNA Workshop to secondary school students attending Christ King Secondary School. They all did an excellent job explaining the experiments to the students, demonstrating how to use the equipment and answering the students questions.

Some materials, when they get a billion times smaller than size of a human body, acquire principally new and often unexpected features. Miniscule but powerful nanoparticles (from Greek word “nanos” meaning “dwarf”) drive the modern technical progress and shape the way we live. Computers and smartphones, medical scanners and spacecrafts, CCTV cameras, telescopes and the cosmetics are just a few examples of devices that exist thanks to the advanced nanomaterials.

An article published in the Irish Times newspaper today highlights the acquisition of Luxcel Biosciences by Agilent Technologies.

Researchers from the School of Biochemistry and Cell Biology discovered a molecular timer in the human gene AMD1.