Issue 66, spring 2011

Wellcome NEWS
INVESTING IN
POLLINATOR
RESEARCH
Protecting insect pollinators’
health – and our food supply.
 Technology Transfer

Technology
The McGRATH® Series 5 video laryngoscope, developed with Trust funding.

14
Transfer: Beautiful creatures:
Designed and manufactured by Aircraft Medical

Lainson and his parasites

Pushing the CONTENTS

boundaries INSIDE THIS ISSUE

of medical In brief
Message from the Director 4

innovation
Funding news 6
We are a committed funder of Research news 8
translational R&D, bridging the
gap between fundamental research In depth
and the development of new
health products. How I Got Into… cancer genetics: Prof. Mike Stratton 10
We work with world-class Beautiful creatures: Prof. Ralph Lainson 14
investigators in academic institutions The dirty truth: Dirt at Wellcome Collection 20
and companies alike, in pursuit of
solutions for unmet medical needs.
YouTube and blog update 24
Q&A: Dr Beau Lotto 25
Protecting the pollinators 28
Opinion
Museums need more compelling games 13
Appliance of Science: bringing real life into art 34
Picture features
Wellcome Image Awards 2011 22
Nuts and Bolts: primary cilia 26
From the Archive: Nuremberg Chronicle 32
www.wellcome.ac.uk/technologytransfer
2 | WELLCOME NEWS SPRING 2011 | 3
Wellcome NEWS MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR
UKCMRI plans approved
Telling the stories of the Wellcome Trust’s work SIR MARK WALPORT
Editor Chrissie Giles Plans to build a world-leading medical research institute at St Pancras in
Assistant Editor Tom Freeman
Writers Craig Brierley, Chrissie Giles,
London have been approved by Camden councillors. The UK Centre for
Mun-Keat Looi, Jen Middleton Medical Research and Innovation (UKCMRI), designed by the architects
Design Malcolm Chivers, Marianne Dear HOK with PLP Architecture, will have around 1500 staff, including 1250
Photography David Sayer
Publisher Hugh Blackbourn
scientists. The Development Control Committee voted in favour of the
£500 million project on 16 December 2010.
Contributors: Sir David Cooksey, Chairman of UKCMRI, says: “UKCMRI
Mike Stratton illustration Bret Syfert
Primary cilium illustration Lucy Farfort
will harness the talent and potential of doctors, nurses, biologists,
mathematicians, physicists, chemists, computer scientists and engineers
Ideas, comments, suggestions? Get in touch: to understand the underlying causes of disease. This will accelerate our
Wellcome News
Wellcome Trust
ability to treat disease – bringing benefits to patients through the NHS
Gibbs Building and to the economy by developing a sector in which the UK already
215 Euston Road excels.” We are co-founders of UKCMRI, in partnership with the Medical
London NW1 2BE
E wellcome.news@wellcome.ac.uk
Research Council, Cancer Research UK and University College London.
www.wellcome.ac.uk/wellcomenews Construction is expected to begin this year, and to be completed by 2015.

To subscribe:
T +44 (0)20 7611 8651
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E publishing@wellcome.ac.uk
www.wellcome.ac.uk/subscribe Impression of the UKCRMI entrance atrium. Wadsworth3d

All images, unless otherwise stated, are from the

Wellcome Library. You can get copies through
Wellcome Images (images.wellcome.ac.uk).
The Wellcome Trust supports and forms partnerships with a
diverse range of people working on an equally diverse range of topics.
Dirty work includes events on 28 April and 5 May.
On 8 April, the whole building will be
Library welcomes
Head of Discovery
Wellcome Trust
We are a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving
However, there is a common denominator that unites everyone with
whom we work – a passion for their work. In this, the first issue of the
at Wellcome taken over by ‘Elements’. This event,
curated by chemist Andrea Sella and In January the Wellcome Library

Collection
extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. We
support the brightest minds in biomedical research and the new-look Wellcome News, we are proud to be able to bring you some author Hugh Aldersey-Williams, will welcomed Dr Vicki Porter as
medical humanities. Our breadth of support includes public stories of these people and what drives them to succeed. allow visitors to explore the Janus-like Head of Discovery and
engagement, education and the application of research to improve
As Mike Stratton, Director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute The doors have now closed on Wellcome qualities of some elements, including Engagement. Dr Porter will be
health. We are independent of both political and commercial responsible for transforming
interests. www.wellcome.ac.uk and co-leader of the Cancer Genome Project, tells us, his fascination Collection’s High Society exhibition – its arsenic, mercury, oxygen and iodine.
audience strategy, including
with cancer began early in his career, when as a pathologist he would most successful to date – but there’s a www.wellcomecollection.org
finding new ways for people to
This is an open access publication and, with the exception of
images and illustrations, the content may, unless otherwise stated,
look down a microscope to diagnose cancer. This fascination has driven wealth of events coming up in the spring. get involved with the work and
be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium, subject to his career, and the Institute that he now heads is working to understand Replacing High Society is Dirt: The filthy the resources of the Library. She
the following constraints: content must be reproduced accurately; the genetic changes behind the cancers he used to examine. reality of everyday life (see page 20). There joins from the J Paul Getty Trust in
content must not be used in a misleading context; the Wellcome
Trust must be attributed as the original author and the title of the
It was a similar passion for the microscopic world that took will be a series of events around Dirt, Los Angeles, where she managed
document specified in the attribution. The views and opinions Ralph Lainson from his native England to Brazil. The Wellcome including – for the strong of stomach digital policy and audience strategy.
expressed by writers within Wellcome News do not necessarily Trust’s longest-serving grantholder – 47 years so far – he has forged perhaps – a dirt-themed Supper Salon She has also worked at the National
reflect those of the Wellcome Trust or Editor. No responsibility
a formidable reputation as a parasitologist, specialising in the on 13 April. Gallery, Tate, the Royal Collection
is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to
disfiguring disease leishmaniasis. He has discovered nearly 100 new Other happenings include ‘Tell it and the National Gallery of Art in
persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or
otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, parasite species, as well as the sand-fly vectors that carry the disease. to Your Doctor’, two events that explore Washington, DC.
instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. ISSN 1356-
9112. First published by the Wellcome Trust, 2011. Wellcome News
An interest in insects also unites the researchers working as part the conversations between doctors and
of the £10 million Insect Pollinators Initiative. Through this, nine patients, which will run on 16 and 21
is © the Wellcome Trust and is licensed under Creative Commons
Attribution 2.0 UK. The Wellcome Trust is a charity registered in diverse groups are examining the pressing issue of how populations April. The ‘Born Today’ series, which
New-look SPIN
England and Wales, no. 210183. Its sole trustee is The Wellcome
of bees and other pollinators are collapsing and what can be done to looks at the moment of childbirth, We have relaunched our SPIN
Trust Limited, a company registered in England and Wales, no. (Science Policy in the News) service
ce is at 215 Euston Road, London reverse this trend. From neurobiologists to beekeepers, mathematical
with a new look. A weekly email
NW1 2BE, UK). modellers to nutritionists, this is a great example of people with produced by our Strategic Planning
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50%
This document was printed on material
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Experiments with bees also feature heavily in the work of Beau
Lotto, a neuroscientist and enthusiastic advocate for involving the
Big Picture: concise digests of news stories
relating to science policy. The new
public in the process of discovery. He recently worked with primary-
school children to help them become the first in the world to plan,
The Cell out now format includes direct web links to
the original stories, where available.
perform and publish their own scientific study in a peer-reviewed From the ethics of stem cell research to There’s a new dedicated website
journal. Now, with Wellcome Trust support, he has taken his sculptures made of frozen blood, Big Picture: for the service at spin.wellcome.
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in experiments. Trust educational resource for 16+ students, complete archive of SPIN, which
dates back to 1992, or sign up
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FUNDING NEWS
New ethics chairman
Professor Roger Brownsword
has been appointed Chairman
of the UK Biobank Ethics and
Governance Council (EGC),
replacing Professor Graeme
Laurie. The independent EGC,
which we fund in partnership
with the Medical Research
Council, advises UK Biobank
on rigorous standards of ethical,
legal and social consideration.
UK Biobank, a long-term project to
build a resource for health research,
has already recruited over 530 000
volunteers. www.ukbiobank.ac.uk
Oxford prize success
Three University of Oxford
researchers are celebrating
awards. Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh, a
Wellcome Trust Research Career
Development Fellow who studies
how the brain represents numbers,
has won the Career Development
category at the Society of
Neuroscience Achievement
Awards. This recognises early-
career promise and achievement.
Also a Research Career
Development Fellow, Dr Rob
Klose, who works in the field
of epigenetics, has been named
as one of this year’s European
Molecular Biology Organization
Young Investigators. These
prestigious awards are given to
the most promising European
young researchers at a critical
stage of their scientific careers.
Dr Emily Holmes has been
awarded the 2010 Spearman
Medal by the British Psychological
Society. Dr Holmes, a Trust
Intermediate Clinical Fellow, is
a research clinical psychologist
whose experimental work is based
on cognitive behavioural therapy.
BAFTA win
We’re thrilled to report that that
Timelines.tv’s smallpox resource
Smallpox Through Time, which
was funded by a Wellcome Trust
Medical History and Humanities
public engagement grant, won the
Secondary Learning category at the
2010 Children’s BAFTAs. The free
resource was launched to celebrate
the 30th anniversary of the global
eradication of smallpox, and is
aimed at teachers and students
studying history of medicine at
GCSE level. timelines.tv
6 | WELLCOME NEWS
Rare disease drug development
The X-ray crystal structure of transthyretin and the small molecule mds84. Dr Simon Kolstoe
Pentraxin Therapeutics Ltd, a
spin-out company from University
College London (UCL), has licensed
a drug development programme to
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). This builds
on Wellcome Trust-funded research.
Pentraxin was established by
UCL’s Professor Mark Pepys to hold
the intellectual property arising from
his research. Now, the company is
collaborating with GSK to develop
Professor Pepys’s invention of novel
small molecules, including one called
mds84, that stabilise transthyretin.
Transthyretin is a blood protein that
can in certain circumstances cause
amyloidosis, a rare but fatal disease.
Catalyst CEO appointed
Dr Martino Picardo has become the first
Chief Executive Officer of Stevenage
Bioscience Catalyst, a ‘hub’ for early-
stage biotechnology companies.
Previously Managing Director of the
University of Manchester Incubator
Company (UMIC), Dr Picardo says
of his appointment: “I am absolutely
delighted to be taking up this new role.
Although I am sad to be leaving friends
and colleagues in UMIC, I am also
looking forward to working with new
colleagues in what will be a very exciting
and unique opportunity for UK plc in
NEWS & FEATURES
www.wellcome.ac.uk/news
A £2.5 million award made to
Professor Pepys and colleagues
through our Seeding Drug Discovery
initiative in 2007 supported some of
the research that led to this recent
deal. “The creation of mds84 involved
cutting-edge science and some
serendipity,” says Professor Pepys.
“The subsequent generous support
of the Wellcome Trust for this
early-phase drug design programme
created the opportunity for further
progression and evaluation. Now,
GSK will bring its drug discovery and
development expertise to work with
the team on developing the potential
of these small molecules.”
drug discovery and development.”
Construction has begun on the
£38 million development in Stevenage,
Hertfordshire, which will neighbour
the GSK research and development
campus. It is hoped that the facility
will eventually create up to 1500 new
jobs. The five funding partners for the
facility are the Wellcome Trust, the UK
Department of Business, Innovation
and Skills, GlaxoSmithKline, the East
of England Development Agency and the
Technology Strategy Board.
www.stevenagecatalyst.com
BLOG
wellcometrust.wordpress.com
Testing the tsetse fly Wellcome Trust Genome Campus
Among the grants made Dr Daniel Masiga from the
recently through our International Centre of Insect
Populations and Public Physiology and Ecology in
Health stream are two Nairobi, Kenya, to sample
exploring aspects of the tsetse flies and trypanosomes
tsetse fly, the carrier of the from different parts of Kenya.
parasites that cause African They will test the idea that
trypanosomiasis in humans local host and parasite
(sleeping sickness) and in populations are adapted to
animals. Dr Alvaro Acosta- each other, comparing how
Serrano from the University well different tsetse
of Glasgow has been funded populations transmit
to investigate how, on a different trypanosomes.
molecular level, the parasites Wellcome Library
(trypanosomes) cross the
protective lining of the
tsetse fly gut, where they
live and develop before being
transmitted to people and
Advanced
livestock.
Courses
Oliver Burston, Wellcome Images
Also at Glasgow, Professor
Mike Turner will work with
and Scientific
Conferences
Medical humanities update
Historical aspects of the British Navy, hospital politics and
twin beds are just some of the topics under investigation At the cutting edge of biomedical
thanks to our Medical History and Humanities awards. training, discussion and debate.
Professor Mark Harrison, University of Oxford, has been Wellcome Trust Advanced Courses
awarded a programme grant of over £700 000 for his project and Scientific Conferences are hosted
‘From Sail to Steam: Health, medicine and the Victorian
in dedicated facilities at the Wellcome
navy’, which will explore the role of the Royal Navy in
Trust Genome Campus in Hinxton –
bringing health information to Britain in the 19th century.
a short distance from the historic city
Funded by a Research Leave Award, Professor Barry
Doyle from the University of Huddersfield is investigating of Cambridge.
the politics of hospital provision in Britain in the early 20th Funding is now available for new
century. He’ll use case studies of Leeds, Middlesbrough and
Sheffield to explore how the pre-NHS health system worked,
Advanced Courses and to seed
the developemnt of new Scientific
questioning the idea that a national organisation is the only
Conferences. Please contact
way to ensure effective provision of hospitals.
Dr Rebecca Twells, Programme
At the University of Lancaster, Dr Hilary Hinds will use
Manager, for more information
her Research Leave Award to explore how changing ideas
about health and hygiene between 1870 and 1970 affected (rt@hinxton.wellcome.ac.uk).
the rise and fall of twin beds for married couples. For details of all upcoming Advanced
Courses and Scientific Conferences,
please visit:
Pavement projections www.wellcome.ac.uk/hinxton
To mark the International funded by us, was created by
Day of Persons with artist Simon Mckeown from
Disabilities on 3 December Teesside University. Thanks
2010, we hosted a special to VSA, the International
one-day video installation Organization on Arts and
outside Wellcome Trust HQ Disability, Motion Disabled
of Motion Disabled, a digital is now being exhibited
exploration of the bodies of worldwide. For more
people who are physically details, see wellcometrust.
different. The work, part- wordpress.com.
SPRING 2011 | 7
RESEARCH NEWS
Pilot study
The brains of fighter pilots are
wired differently from those of
the rest of us, say scientists at
UCL. They used cognitive tests
to show that RAF Tornado
fighter pilots had superior
cognitive control to members
of the public – but were
more sensitive to irrelevant,
distracting information.
The findings suggest that,
in humans, expert control
of cognitive processes, as
demonstrated by the pilots,
may be linked to a heightened
response to both relevant and
irrelevant stimuli, accompanied
by ‘re-wiring’ in the white
matter of the brain.
Roberts RE et al. J Neurosci
2010;30(50):17063–7.
Lay counselling
Professor Vikram Patel and
colleagues at the Sangath
Centre, Goa, India, and the
London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine have shown
that trained lay counsellors can
be effective at helping to treat
depression and anxiety in public
primary care facilities. The
intervention they tested was a
collaborative approach between
a lay counsellor, a primary care
doctor and a psychiatrist.
Patel V et al. Lancet
2010;376(9758):2086–95.
Faster sequencing
Scientists from Imperial
College London have taken
an important step towards
developing a technology
that could sequence a genome
in mere minutes, and at a
fraction of the cost of current
commercial techniques.
The technology – nanopore
sequencing – involves propelling
a DNA strand through tiny
holes, or nanopores, cut into
a silicon chip, then reading the
sequence. The researchers are
confident that their finding
could lead to an ultrafast
commercial DNA-sequencing
tool in just ten years.
Ivanov AP et al. Nano Lett
2011;11(1):279–85.
8 | WELLCOME NEWS
Studying how we see
Two studies that received Wellcome
Trust support have added to our
knowledge of how we see the world.
Professor Rob Lucas and Dr Tim Brown
from the University of Manchester have
been studying the neurons that carry
signals from the eye’s rods and cones
to the brain, and have found that 2 per
cent of these neurons produce a light-
sensitive protein known as melanopsin.
Previously, these cells were thought
to be responsible for detecting light for
subconscious responses such as changing
pupil size. However, the researchers
showed that melanopsin also helped
brain regions involved in conscious
perception to measure brightness –
in both normally sighted mice and
those previously considered to be blind.
“Now we are asking to what extent
melanopsin could help the normally
sighted to see, and what it might
contribute to the blind and partially
sighted,” says Prof. Lucas. These
findings could also change how we
design computer displays and TV
screens, currently made with only
rods and cones in mind.
In other research, scientists have
shown that how we see our environment
Neural neighbours activate stem cells
Stem cells, responsible for the
maintenance and repair of many
tissues, spend much of their time
dormant, being activated when new
cells are needed. The signals to grow
and proliferate are often relayed to the
stem cells by their neighbours, which
form a microenvironment known as
the ‘stem cell niche’.
Professor Andrea Brand and Dr
James Chell of the Gurdon Institute,
Cambridge, have studied some of
the neighbours of neural stem cells –
glial cells – to investigate their role in
activating stem cells. In the larval stages
of a developing fruit fly, neural stem cells
are activated in response to a nutritional
stimulus, the protein in fly food. The
researchers found that neighbouring
glial cells pass on this stimulus by
producing insulin-like molecules. By
genetically programming glial cells to
produce these molecules even without
a nutritional stimulus, they were able
to activate the neural stem cells.
Kirlian photograph of the eye. N Seery/Wellcome Images
depends on the size of the visual parts of
the brain. Researchers at the Wellcome
Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL
used functional magnetic resonance
imaging and optical illusions to show
that the smaller a person’s primary
visual cortex, the more pronounced
visual illusions seemed.
Brown TM et al. Melanopsin contributions to irradiance
coding in the thalamo-cortical visual system. PLoS Biol
2010;8(12):e1000558.
Schwarzkopf DS et al. The surface area of human
V1 predicts the subjective experience of object size.
Nat Neurosci 2011;14(1):28–30.
As well as highlighting the
importance of insulin-like molecules
in signalling stem cells to activate, this
work hints at the potential of being able
to develop stem cell therapies that target
stem cells’ ‘neighbourhoods’ rather than
the cells themselves.
Chell JM, Brand AH. Nutrition-responsive glia
control exit of neural stem cells from quiescence.
Cell 2010;143:1161–73.
Drosophila neural stem cells (green), showing their large
nucleoli (blue) and the nuclei of the surrounding neurons
(red). James Chell and Andrea Brand
Larynx transplant restores woman’s voice
A pioneering transplant technique,
developed with Wellcome Trust funding,
has restored the voice of a woman who
had lost the ability to breathe on her own
and had not spoken for 11 years.
Brenda Charett Jensen, a 52-year-old
woman from California, had lost the use
of her larynx during surgery in 1999. In
October 2010, an international team of
surgeons performed an operation to
replace her larynx, thyroid gland and
trachea. The 18-hour procedure, which
took place at the UC Davis Medical
Center in Sacramento, was followed
by two months of rehabilitation, during
which the nerves were regenerating,
and she has learned to speak again.
“Every day is a new beginning for
me,” says Ms Jensen. “I’ll probably
never sing in a choir or anything, but
it’s exciting to talk normally, and I can’t
wait to eat and drink and swim again.”
This is the second ever documented
larynx transplant, and the first in which
the larynx, trachea and thyroid were
transplanted together. The techniques was funded principally by us – the Brenda Charett Jensen and her medical team.
used were developed by Professor Martin first time that a surgeon had received UC Davis Health System
Birchall, a visiting professor of Trust funding.
otolaryngology at UC Davis and then Watch a video on this from UCL
at the University of Bristol. His work at www.youtube.com/ucltv
Artesunate
is preferred
treatment for
malaria
The largest ever clinical trial among
people hospitalised with severe malaria
has concluded that the drug artesunate
should now be the preferred treatment
for the disease in both children and
adults worldwide.
An international consortium of
researchers, led by Professor Nick
White of the Wellcome Trust–Mahidol
University–Oxford Tropical Medicine Chromolithograph recommending quinine to prevent malaria,
Research Programme in Bangkok, by Benjamin Armand Rabier (1869–1939). Wellcome Library
compared artesunate treatment (used
in Asia for severe malaria) with quinine studying 5425 children with severe having seizures or developing
treatment, which has been in use malaria. With artesunate treatment dangerously low blood sugar.
worldwide for over 300 years. 8.5 per cent of the patients died,
Dondorp AM et al. Artesunate versus quinine in
The African Quinine versus compared with 10.9 per cent of those the treatment of severe falciparum malaria in African
Artesunate Malaria Trial (AQUAMAT) who had quinine. Children treated with children (AQUAMAT): an open-label, randomised trial.
Lancet 2010;376(9753):1647–57.
was carried out over five years in artesunate were also less likely to suffer
hospitals across nine African countries, other effects, such as falling into a coma,
SPRING 2011 | 9
 CAREERS
PROFESSOR MIKE STRATTON
HOW I GOT INTO...
CANCER GENETICS
A pathologist drawn into molecular biology in the mid-1980s,
Professor Mike Stratton tells Chrissie Giles how he’ll never stop
being fascinated by cells.
s a teenager I was keenly
interested in biology.
For example, I was
fascinated by the
then novel notion that
mitochondria were ancient
infectious microorganisms with which
we were all now living in cooperative and
peaceful harmony, and wooed my future
wife with tales of such extraordinary
phenomena. I was excited by the notion
of doing biological experiments to reveal
such marvels. Indeed, I entered medicine
thinking that medical practice would
naturally and inevitably entail asking
intriguing questions about human
biology and disease. And in some senses
it is like that. However, during much of
the period I spent as a junior doctor I felt
frustrated at the distance there existed
from thinking about the mysteries of
normality and disease.
I became a histopathologist because
I wished to get closer to those core
questions. As a pathologist one
mostly spends time looking down the
microscope at diseased tissues. Peering
into this hidden world provides you with
profound and powerful insights into the
ways disease is generated. You see order
and disorder. Indeed, although there is
considerable ugliness there is sometimes
10 | WELLCOME NEWS
awful beauty in the way cells conspire to
orchestrate life-threatening conditions.
Pathology was certainly inspiring and
thought-provoking. Nevertheless, it was
still at arm’s length from the real action.
As a pathologist, about half the
samples I was asked to look at were
from tumours of various types. At the
time we already knew that all cancers
arose from a single cell that was
behaving badly, with loss of normal
growth control, because of abnormalities
in its DNA. As a young doctor straining
to do research, encountering the diverse
patterns of abnormal cell proliferation
in cancer down the microscope almost
inevitably drove me to speculate on the
invisible abnormalities in the DNA
within those blue cancer cell nuclei
that were responsible for all this. I
could not imagine a more direct search
for fundamental biological insight than
this endeavour. At this time, in 1984,
the revolution in recombinant DNA
technology was having major impact
and I moved to the Institute of
Cancer Research to do a PhD using
this technology to explore the genetics
of cancer.
I was hooked on cancer genetics
from that point. After my PhD I went
back to medicine for two years to qualify
as a consultant histopathologist, but
subsequently returned to the ICR to
begin work on the genetics of breast
cancer susceptibility.
It has become of almost mystical
fascination to me that you can look
down a microscope and see the
misbehaving cells of a tumour, and
then delve into their nuclei to pick
out, from the thousands of millions of
bases of DNA, the few that are mutated
and cause the abnormal proliferation.
I still occasionally look down a
microscope and make a stab at
diagnosing the type of cancer present,
but obviously would not seriously trust
my judgement on this anymore. I no
longer practise as a pathologist but
I have a huge amount of respect for
those who do. When one has looked
down a microscope every day for years
those images of a private, subterranean
world become second nature, and they
remain with me.
Professor Stratton is Director of the Wellcome Trust
Sanger Institute (www.sanger.ac.uk), and co-leader
of the Cancer Genome Project.
SPRING 2011 | 11

Take your next group meeting
to a cultural hub of activity
WELLCOME TRUST
CONFERENCE CENTRE
Bring together your brightest
minds in a location to inspire
12 | WELLCOME NEWS
OPINION
“Museums need more compelling games”
Contact us on 020 7611 2200
or email conferencecentre@wellcome.ac.uk MARTHA HENSON AND DANNY BIRCHALL
183 Euston Road, London
www.wellcomecollectionconference.org
Wellcome Collection is part of the Wellcome Trust. The Wellcome Trust is
o you play games? We might dismiss
a charity registered in England and Wales, no. 210183.
them as childish, but in his 1938 work
Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga argued
that play is an essential component of
all human culture. The chances are that
you enjoy playing something – whether
it’s Angry Birds or a round of charades at Christmas.
Globally, gaming is big business, with a market
worth an estimated $50 billion (£30bn) in 2011 and
a demographically diverse audience with an even
gender split. But it’s not just about numbers: the
dedication of gamers to the pleasure of play means
time spent at the console can exceed that spent with
a feature film or novel.
The educational potential seems obvious. So
why have museums and educationalists, with all the
information and resources at their disposal, failed
to make more than a handful of really compelling
educational games? The work of game designers
and researchers such as Jane McGonigal (author
of Reality is Broken) and Channel 4 Education
(including the Wellcome Trust-funded Routes) has
amply demonstrated the power of games to bring
both children and adults cultural and scientific
ideas in new forms.
But many have assumed that any game-like
feature is enough to engage people, and tacking
Contact us on 01223 495000
minimal interactivity onto a barely disguised
or email info@wtconference.org.uk
Hinxton, Cambridgeshire
www.wtconference.org.uk
The Wellcome Trust is a charity registered in England and Wales, no. 210183.
Played any great educational games lately?
Email us at wellcomenews@wellcome.ac.uk or tweet @wellcometrust
didactic lesson plan has unfortunately been the
dismal standard in this field. However, others, such
as the Science Museum, have begun to harness the
potential of games for learning. The physics-based
Launchball game was hugely popular and they have
just released Rizk (about climate change).
We’ve had our own success recently with
High Tea, a strategy game centred on the dubious
actions of the British Empire in the run-up to the
Opium Wars of 1839. From over 1.5m plays in its first
fortnight after release, plus comments, reviews and
survey responses, we can see that we have achieved
both a wide reach and our educational aims.
Why are these particular games successful?
Because they put gameplay at the centre of the
experience and use experienced digital agencies
to deliver this. These examples are a great start,
but surely more could be done in this area.
Games might seem a trivial way of approaching
the public with new ideas, but the playful and
exploratory impulses that draw gamers to great
games are still largely untapped as a means of
engagement. By pushing boundaries ourselves,
we hope to show others what can be achieved.
www.wellcomecollection.org.uk/hightea
• Martha Henson is Multimedia Editor at the Wellcome Trust.
• Danny Birchall is the Editor of the Wellcome Collection website.
SPRING 2011 | 13
TROPICAL MEDICINE

BY MUN-KEAT LOOI

BEAUTIFUL
CREATURES
LAINSON AND
HIS PARASITES
In 1965, Ralph Lainson left London for Brazil with a three-
year Wellcome Trust grant. He never came back. What was
it about tropical Brazil that appealed to the young man?
The parasites, of course.

14 | WELLCOME NEWS SPRING 2011 | 15


alph Lainson, like
many, loves Brazil,
but not for the reasons
you might expect.
“The Amazon region
is a veritable mine of
parasitological information, yet very,
very few people work in this field here,”
says the 84-year-old scientist,
enthusiastically. “I’ve always said to
young Brazilian students what a
wonderful place they’re in. If you turn
over a stone you are likely to find four
new species underneath it.”
It was this passion for the
microscopic world that drew him away
from his native England to the tropics
some 50 years ago. It has also resulted
in Professor Ralph Lainson now holding
the titles of Fellow of the Royal Society
and Officer of the Order of the British
Empire, and being the Wellcome Trust’s
longest-serving grantholder – a record
47 years and counting. Such a
background might not seem to fit
with his strange-but-true stories of
the anaconda that swallowed a visiting
dentist, and the angler attacked by
piranhas while clearing his boat’s
propeller. Yet Ralph is a leading
authority on parasites, particularly
protozoan (single-celled) parasites.
The clues to this are his sand-fly-
patterned tie and the smile on his face
when I ask about his specialism, the
neotropical Leishmania.
Ralph’s long relationship with the
parasite began in 1959 in Belize (then
British Honduras). At the time, no
one in the country was sure of the
origin of ‘Chiclero ulcer’ (cutaneous
leishmaniasis). Ralph says: “We had the
parasite isolated from human beings
and we knew that most of the people
who acquired the disease worked in
the forest, often for long periods. It was
reasonable to assume, therefore, that
there were some reservoir hosts of the
parasite among the forest animals.”
For two years they tracked all manner
of creatures, with little success until a
natural disaster lent a helping hand.
“Hurricane Hattie I’ll always
remember,” says Ralph. “It was a terrible
experience, levelled flat a lot of the
forest, but the result was the wild
animals found it difficult to find food.
We had no problem capturing a large
16 | WELLCOME NEWS
1927
BORN IN UPPER
BEEDING, SUSSEX, UK
1920s
number of rodents, opossums and
other animals in our baited traps.”
Among them was a rodent with lesions
on its tail, lesions that turned out to
be full of the parasite. Ralph identified
three different species of rodent
frequently carrying the parasite.
He and his team also captured
hundreds of phlebotomine sand flies
(using themselves as bait!) and offered
them hamsters experimentally infected
with Leishmania from patients.
Dissection of the sand flies several
days after their hamster blood meal
revealed the parasite inside. This left
Ralph and his entomologist, John
Strangways-Dixon, in no doubt that
the same species of insect that
transmitted Leishmania in the Old
World did it in the New World.
It only remained to prove the
sand fly’s role in the transmission
of the causative parasite to humans.
1930s 1940s
“Now was the time to obtain a
volunteer and feed these infected insects
on him,” says Ralph. “Strangways-Dixon
was keen to be this person. He said that
as the entomologist he was the correct
person to do this. He said, they’re my
sand flies so if they’re going to feed on
anything or anyone it’s going to be me.
I’m their boss!”
“We fed the flies on Strangways-
Dixon’s belly, and a few weeks later a
tiny lesion appeared, containing the
parasites. It was most exciting: the first
experimental proof of transmission to
man of a neotropical Leishmania species
by the bite of a phlebotomine sand fly!
The moment we worked that out was,
I suppose, when I realised that I was a
real scientist.”
New World order
Ralph soon returned to the UK,
but pined for the tropics and the
1958
KEY WORK ON TRANSMISSION
OF TOXOPLASMA
1955–59
LECTURESHIP AT LSHTM
1955
GAINS PHD IN PARASITOLOGY
FROM LONDON SCHOOL OF
HYGIENE AND TROPICAL MEDICINE
1951
GRADUATES WITH BSC IN SPECIAL ENTOMOLOGY
WITH SUBSIDIARY BOTANY FROM BRIGHTON
TECHNICAL COLLEGE
1950s
Image credits: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine/SPL (above left), R Lainson (1962, 2005), Odilson Sá/Flickr (1965), Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and
Hygiene (1971, 1984), SPL (page 18 top left), Swiss Tropical Institute, courtesy of R Knechtli (1977), The Royal Society (1982), Wellcome Images (others).
opportunity to continue his research
in the New World. So, in 1963, he
toured Latin America collecting strains
of Leishmania and sizing up different
research institutes. He went through
Central America, down to Colombia,
Venezuela and elsewhere, until his
final stop, the Instituto Evandro Chagas
in Belém, part of the Amazon delta
of north Brazil.
There, he showed the researchers
his photographs of rodent lesions in
Belize. One of them, Dr Otis Causey,
said he had seen very similar lesions on
the Oryzomys capito rodents common
to the region, but thought they were
simply bacterial or fungal infections
growing on damaged tails. Two weeks
later in Rio de Janeiro, he approached
Ralph with a slide made from a rodent
in Belém. It was teeming with
Leishmania parasites. They had for the
first time found the reservoir host of at
1959–62
DIRECTOR OF DERMAL
LEISHMANIASIS UNIT IN
CAYO DISTRICT, BELIZE
1968
WITH JEFFREY SHAW,
DESCRIBES AND NAMES
L. AMAZONENSIS, THE
PARASITE THAT CAUSES
1965 ANERGIC CUTANEOUS
DIRECTOR OF NEWLY
ESTABLISHED WELLCOME
LEISHMANIASIS
PARASITOLOGY UNIT
IN BELÉM, BRAZIL
1964
AWARDED DSC FROM
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
1964
FIRST WELLCOME TRUST GRANT
1962
WITH JOHN STRANGWAYS-DIXON, IDENTIFIES FOREST
RODENTS AS HOSTS OF THE SPECIES CAUSING HUMAN
CUTANEOUS LEISHMANIASIS. OBTAINS THE FIRST EXPERIMENTAL
TRANSMISSION OF A NEW WORLD LEISHMANIA SPECIES
(L. MEXICANA) TO HUMANS VIA THE PHLEBOTOMINE SAND FLY
1960s
least one Leishmania species infecting – the human parasite was tiny, only
humans in Brazil. about 2–3 micrometres in diameter,
Although cutaneous leishmaniasis whereas those that Otis Causey
manifested itself in different forms found were nearly twice the size.
in Central and South America, many Furthermore, when they inoculated
clinicians thought the disease was the Oryzomys-derived parasite into
due to the same parasite, Leishmania hamsters it produced huge tumour-like
braziliensis, and that this was the same lesions in the skin very quickly, whereas
as L. tropica, the strain that caused L. braziliensis took six months or more
leishmaniasis in the Old World. Ralph for one tiny lesion to appear.
was among those certain that different Ralph’s team found a small number
leishmanial parasites were involved of the parasites that were the same as
in the disease in different parts of the those from Oryzomys (which they
continent. Arriving in Brazil with a named L. mexicana amazonensis). In
three-year Wellcome Trust grant, his the following years they identified a
team collected parasite samples from (still-increasing) number of different
all sorts of animals: armadillos, Leishmania species, often with specific
opossums, foxes, porcupines, monkeys or closely related sand fly vectors and
and more, as well as human patients different wild animal reservoirs. By
with different forms of leishmaniasis. 1979, so many different Leishmania
Their findings were striking: the species had been discovered – at the
parasites found in Oryzomys were clearly time, 13 from the Americas, eight
much larger than those of L. braziliensis of which infected humans – that
SPRING 2011 | 17
 1984
AWARDED MANSON
MEDAL BY ROYAL SOCIETY
OF TROPICAL MEDICINE
AND HYGIENE
1977
FIRST EXPERIMENTAL
PROOF THAT THE SAND
FLY IS A VECTOR OF
VISCERAL LEISHMANIASIS
PUBLISHED IN NATURE 1982
ELECTED FELLOW
OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY
1982
1971
AWARDED CHALMERS MEDAL BY
AWARDED HONORARY MEMBERSHIP
OF THE LONDON SCHOOL OF
HYGIENE AND TROPICAL MEDICINE.
ROYAL SOCIETY OF TROPICAL PRESENTED AT THE SCHOOL BY
MEDICINE AND HYGIENE PRINCE PHILIP
1970s 1980s
1980s
“It’s not work, more of a very
interesting hobby. Because these
parasites are rather beautiful
little creatures.”
the researchers proposed a new
classification of them. Ralph has
speculated that, “considering the
remarkable number of Leishmania
species that have now been recorded
in the neotropics, and particularly in
the Amazon region, this area might
well be the birthplace of this genus”.
These findings have helped to
define outbreaks of the disease in the
region, with considerable public health
implications. People infected with
L. amazonensis may develop diff use,
18 | WELLCOME NEWS
1992
RETIRES FROM DIRECTORSHIP OF THE
WELLCOME PARASITOLOGY UNIT
1990s
anergic cutaneous leishmaniasis
(affecting patients whose immune
systems are incomplete, a condition
incurable at the time), and those
infected with L. braziliensis stand the
risk of developing mucocutaneous
leishmaniasis, which can be very
disfiguring. Such patients require
prompt and particularly intensive
treatment. Moreover, people immune
to one species of the parasite are usually
vulnerable to others, complicating
vaccine production. And Brazil’s
increasing urbanisation and population
movement has meant that groups are
often exposed to different species – and
the different sand flies that transmit
them – as their environment changes.
“One by one, we’ve shown that
there is not a single parasite causing
neotropical human cutaneous
leishmaniasis, but six or seven,” says
Ralph. “These are now known, identified
2005
WELLCOME TRUST
RESEARCH GRANT
2002
WELLCOME TRUST
RESEARCH GRANT
2000s
and recognisable such that people can tell
which one a man is infected with. Every
bit of knowledge gained regarding the
ecology, epidemiology and distribution
of the different species is of help in
control of the diseases they cause.”
Ralph’s three years in Brazil
turned into 30 and firmly established
the research group that became the
Wellcome Parasitology Unit. Under his
directorship, the Unit made a string of
important discoveries, in leishmaniasis
and other parasitic diseases. In 1969,
they published the first record of Chagas’
disease in the Amazon region of Brazil,
demonstrating that the disease could
spread easily through food
contaminated with faeces from species
of blood-sucking triatomine bugs. In
1977 they published in Nature, describing
the first experimental evidence that the
bite of sand fly Lutzomyia longipalpis
transmits Leishmaniasis chagai (the cause
of American visceral leishmaniasis)
to vertebrates. And in 1981, the Unit
discovered a new sand fly transmitting
L. braziliensis in Amazonian Brazil,
which they named Lutzomyia
(Psychodopygus) wellcomei (says Ralph:
“We have an expression in Portuguese:
pucha saco, which means that by giving
it this name, we might persuade the
Trust to continue our grant!”).
Although the Unit closed in 1992,
its legacy continues at the Instituto
Evandro Chagas, now a hub for visiting
scientists researching all aspects of
Leishmania and other parasites, from
ecology to epidemiology, immunology
and the genetics of host responses to
infection. It also boasts a significant
resource in its collection of cryo-
preserved parasite material and records,
amassed during the Wellcome Unit’s life.
Ralph has helped to discover nearly
100 new parasite species and even had
one named after him: L. (Viannia)
lainsoni, discovered in 1987. His efforts
have earned him a string of awards.
He tells me of his pride on becoming a
Fellow of the Royal Society (“the finest
appreciation that anybody can give a
scientist”) and receiving the OBE from
the Queen in the name of science
(“you get footballers who are knighted,
probably because they’re very useful
economically – a scientist is usually
underpaid and usually not very much
appreciated by the majority of the
population”). And though he ‘retired’
in 1996, Ralph never got out of the lab.
Fourteen years later he spends his spare
time staring down a microscope,
addicted to filling in a jigsaw puzzle
that will never be complete: an ever-
fuller picture of the parasites.
“What I love about my work is the
opportunity to discover and enjoy the
extraordinary beauty of structure and
complicated life cycles of these little
organisms. It’s not work, more of a
very interesting hobby. Because these
parasites are rather beautiful little
creatures.”
Lainson R. The neotropical Leishmania species: a
brief historical review of their discovery, ecology and
taxonomy. Rev Pan-Amaz Saude 2010;1(2):13–32.
Lainson R et al. Experimental transmission of
Leishmania chagasi, causative agent of neotropical
visceral leishmaniasis, by the sandfly Lutzomyia
longipalpis. Nature 1977;266(5603):628–30.
Lainson R et al. Leishmaniasis in Brazil: XVI. Isolation and
identification of Leishmania species from sandflies, wild
mammals and man in north Para State, with particular
reference to L. braziliensis guyanensis causative agent of
‘pianbois’. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg 1981;75(4):530–6.
Lainson R, Strangways-Dixon J. Dermal leishmaniasis in
British Honduras: some host-reservoirs of L. brasiliensis
mexicana. BMJ 1962;1(5292):1596–8.
Lainson R et al. Chagas’ disease in the Amazon Basin:
speculations on transmission per os. Rev Inst Med Trop
Sao Paulo 1980;22(6):294–7.
Lainson R. Observations on the development and nature
of pseudocysts and cysts of Toxoplasma gondii. Trans R
Soc Trop Med Hyg 1958;52(5):396–407.
Lainson R et al. On a new family of non-pigmented
parasites in the blood of reptiles: Garniidae fam.nov.,
(Coccidiida: Haemosporidiidea). Some species of the
new genus Garnia. Int J Parasitol 1971;1(3–4):241–50.
SPRING 2011 | 19
WELLCOME COLLECTION International Senior Research Fellowships in Basic Biomedical Science

THE DIRTY TRUTH

To anthropologist Mary Douglas, dirt is “matter out of
place”. To explore this idea, Wellcome Collection’s latest
exhibition – Dirt – is inviting all of us to get up close and
personal with all kinds of filthy things. We found out more.

Long, low, looming. There are five

mottled brown rectangles laid out
imposingly in Wellcome Collection,
as part of its latest exhibition, Dirt:
The filthy reality of everyday life. But,
despite their loamy appearance, these
rectangular blocks are not made of soil

Derren Ready, Eastman Dental Institute/Wellcome Images

or clay but human excrement. Collected
in New Delhi and Jaipur, India, the
excrement was dried, compressed and
mixed with plastic resin, and moulded
into these shapes.
Dirt is about more than excrement,
though. Visitors experience dirt in many
guises, including soil, dust, bacteria and
rubbish. From 1670s Netherlands to a
New York landfill in 2030, Dirt
encompasses locations in six different
cities, at six different points in history.
‘The Community: New Delhi and
Kolkata’ is the section housing the
faecal sculptures. To create the work,
artist Santiago Sierra worked with waste
collected by manual scavengers, working
in India. These scavengers, or safai
karamchari, spend their lives cleaning
dry latrines, often no more than areas
of dusty ground with a couple of bricks
between which people defecate. There
are no rubber gloves, bleach or loo
brushes. Using their bare hands or crude
tools, the scavengers must collect other
people’s excrement in baskets and carry
it to the dump, often miles away.
Most manual scavengers are
‘untouchables’, or Dalits. They exist
outside and below India’s caste system,
and are shunned by many other Indians
who consider them unclean. Born into
this social group, Dalits face lifelong
discrimination, disadvantage and
have to do some of the dirtiest jobs
imaginable. The Constitution of India
– a copy of which is on display in the
exhibition – came into effect in 1950
and formally outlawed untouchability.
20 | WELLCOME NEWS
International Senior
Research Fellowships
A Durga goddess sculpture being carried in procession, 19th century. Wellcome Library
To provide support for
outstanding researchers,
However, many hundreds of thousands celebrate the Hindu festival of Durga either medically or
of Dalits still depend on the practice Puja. These striking structures are scientifically qualified,
for their and their family’s livelihoods. coated in clay, cow dung and mud from who wish to establish an
A number of organisations and the banks of the Ganges before being independent career in a
charities are working to improve the painted. After the celebration, the idols Croatian, Czech, Estonian,
lives of manual scavengers, and improve are returned to the river there to be Hungarian, Polish, William Henry
the availability of public toilets in dissolved back into the water.
Slovakian or Slovenian
India. Details of one of these, Sulabh So does dirt have to be disgusting?
academic institution.
International, can be found in the With exhibits including human
neighbouring room to where the excrement as sculpture, and dung Deadline for preliminary
sculptures are displayed, as can as deities, Dirt might just make you applications: 6 June 2011.
information on a public compost think again.
toilet it has developed. The largest
non-profit organisation in India, Dirt: The filthy reality of everyday life runs at
Wellcome Collection from 24 March to 31
Sulabh International employs the August 2011. www.wellcomecollection.org/dirt
manual scavengers who collected
the waste for Sierra’s sculptures.
Dirt is not always seen as an object
of revulsion – sometimes it can be
considered sacred. Alongside the
sculptures is a Durga goddess, built to
www.wellcome.ac.uk/isrf/wn
 CLOSE-UP

WELLCOME
3

IMAGE AWARDS
From the foreleg of a diving beetle to blood
clotting on a plaster, the subjects captured by
the winners of the Wellcome Image Awards
2011 are certainly varied.
The Awards celebrate the most informative,
striking and technically excellent images acquired
by Wellcome Images – the Wellcome Library’s
image repository – in the past 18 months.
The 2011 winners were announced at a
ceremony in London on 23 February hosted
by writer and presenter Dr Adam Rutherford.
He and his fellow judges, including science
broadcaster Alice Roberts, BBC Medical
Correspondent Fergus Walsh and Guardian
Picture Editor Eric Hilaire, selected 20 winning
images and one winning animation.
Special Awards were given to David Bishop’s
photograph of a live donor kidney transplant and
a fluorescent micrograph by Fernan Federici and
Lionel Dupuy, showing cell division and gene
expression in plant cells.
4
You can see the winning images in person at
Wellcome Collection until mid-July 2011, or browse
them online: www.wellcomeimageawards.org

1. 3D reconstruction of a mouse embryo,

by Agnieszka Jedrusik and Magdalena
Zernicka-Goetz, Gurdon Institute,
Cambridge.
2. Scales on the wing of a moth, by Kevin
Mackenzie, University of Aberdeen.
3. Periodontal bacteria, by Derren Ready,
Eastman Dental Institute.
4. Zebrafish retina, by Kara Cerveny,
Steve Wilson’s lab, UCL.
5. Embryonic mouse kidney, by Bob Kao
and Kieran Short, Monash University.
6. Base of a silkworm caterpillar’s proleg,
1 6
by Spike Walker.

22 | WELLCOME NEWS SPRING 2011 | 23

 Q&A
BLOG AND FILM Wellcome Trust open access

Wellcome Trust blog IN THE HOT SEAT

As the Wellcome Trust celebrates its 75th birthday, our blog
(wellcometrust.wordpress.com) celebrates its first. And a busy
year it has been: over 60 000 unique page views and nearly 300
posts. We have covered everything from fish to football,
DR BEAU LOTTO
synthetic biology to surgery, and the blog is still growing. The
last few months have seen the blog break news about the first
Making anyone part of scientific discovery
scientific paper written by primary-school students (for more
on this, see Q&A opposite) and further contributions from our
grantholders, describing everything from olfactory cells
that could cure paralysis to how we sense time based on the
movement of clouds. We’ve also seen some beautiful images
of folic acid and even fly guts. We are looking forward to the
We’re
opening

ellcome Images
blog’s next 74 years…

Annie Cavanagh, Wellcome

To contribute to the blog, contact the
Editor: m.looi@wellcome.ac.uk
up knowledge Dr Beau Lotto is a neuroscientist on a mission: to get us to understand
that we are each makers of how we see and understand the world. In
to everyone – a recent project he worked with primary school children to help them
become the first in the world to plan, perform and publish their own
Wellcome Trust YouTube channel
Recent additions to our YouTube channel consider cells,
climate change and genetics. Produced to support our
the freedom to scientific experiment in a peer-reviewed journal. Their study resulted
in some novel findings about how bees perceive colour.
educational magazine Big Picture: The Cell, ‘Working with
Cells’ follows Marianne Baker, a PhD student who uses cells
find out starts How did this project come about? whereas children often say, “Ah, and…?” I think
as part of her research into understanding how blood vessels
grow to feed tumours (below). with freedom I’d been doing public experiments in public space
for several years – largely on bumblebees. Indeed,
kids are far more able to deal with uncertainty.

Cell culture on a different scale is examined in ‘True Blood:

The reality of making red blood cells’. With 2.5 million bags of
blood being used in the UK each year, the prospect of being able
to manufacture a potentially limitless supply of tailored,
infection-free red blood cells is compelling. In this film, two
researchers – Marc Turner and Joanne Mountford – talk us
through their project to produce red blood cells from stem cells.
Could combating climate change be good for our health?
‘Tackling Climate Change: The good news’ presents findings
from studies published in the Lancet that explored the
potential health benefits of strategies to mitigate the effects
of climate change.
Lastly, two films outline large-scale projects on genetics
supported by the Trust. ‘People of the British Isles: The
genetic landscape of Islay’ tells the story of a project that is
cataloguing the genetic basis of the UK. In ‘1000 Genomes:
A new foundation for genetic research’, Dr Richard Durbin
and Dr Chris Tyler-Smith describe the key findings of the pilot
phase of the project aiming to create the most comprehensive
map of common human genetic variation.
View, comment on and share our films
at: www.youtube.com/wellcometrust
of access. I’d been engaging with the public with the idea
that we are makers of our own perceptions,
which for me is a fundamental point, not only for
understanding how the brain works, but also for
getting people to question their common-sense
notions of self. I run both a lab and a studio: the
A repository of 2 million full- lab aims to understand perception, and the studio
text articles, 20 million PubMed creates opportunities for people to become
abstract records, clinical guidelines observers of themselves making sense.
and theses – UK PubMed Central When the headteacher at Blackawton Primary
provides a single, free-to-access School in Devon – Dave Stradwick – asked me to
gateway to high-quality research come in for Science Week and talk to the school
about science, I was more than happy to – largely
in the life sciences.
because my children go there. We then started
For more information and to thinking about bringing the bees down to the
discover how to comply with school. But rather than me design the experiment,
our open access policy, visit we wanted to get the kids to think about creating
our website. one, getting them to think about science as a way
of being, not just a thing to do.
www.wellcome.ac.uk/ukpmc
What were you trying to do?
We wanted to do real science, but science as game
(i.e. playing with rules), and for the kids to know,
from the start, that they were asking a question no
one had ever asked before. If you know you’re doing
something new, there’s a level of excitement you
just can’t explain, and the kids sensed this.
Did you find the children open-minded?
Yes – it’s adults that have the problems! I find it
when I show my optical illusions of colour to adults,
they usually say, “Oh, my goodness!” (or more),
How did it go?
It went wonderfully well, which isn’t to say that
we knew it would, as we didn’t even know what the
next day would bring. In the end, the kids devised
an experiment to see if bees could learn to use the
spatial relationships between colours to work out
which flowers contained sugar water, and which
salt water. For writing up the paper, we worked
with four kids in particular. I had my laptop and
asked them what to write, which is why the paper
is in the kidspeak. They would then give me the
words (though I made sure that they knew that as
far as I was concerned nothing was out-of-bounds)
and I’d put them into the form of a narrative.
We submitted the paper to Biology Letters, it
underwent peer review and was then published.
Would this type of project work with adults?
Absolutely. With the support of the Wellcome
Trust, we’ve moved my lab from University College
London to the Science Museum. We have a grey
lab, where people can interact with the objects that
we create, such as installations; a black lab, where
people can become subjects of experiments; and
a white lab, where people can come and design
experiments, by invitation. You’re making the
public part of the process of discovery – not
consumers of it.
• Blackawton PS et al. Blackawton bees. Biol Lett 2010 Dec 22
[Epub ahead of print].
• Maloney LT, Hempel de Ibarra N. Commentary on PS Blackawton
et al., Blackawton Bees. Biol Lett 2010 Dec 22 [Epub ahead of print].

24 | WELLCOME NEWS SPRING 2011 | 25

NUTS AND BOLTS
3

PRIMARY CILIA 3
Primary cilium
Cilia are fine, hair-like protrusions found on the surface of many Almost all types of vertebrate
cell have a primary cilium on their
kinds of cells. Defects in cilia – whether motile or primary – can
surface. Primary cilia don’t move,
lead to diseases, collectively termed ciliopathies. This quick guide unlike motile cilia, and have a
gives you the lowdown on these intriguing organelles. slightly different structure (see left).
8
7
Axoneme
The basic structure of the cilium,
which is around 0.25 micrometres in
diameter and up to 20 micrometres
long. At the lower part of the cilium,
the microtubules are in triplets,
not pairs.

First seen in the 17th century by Dutch
scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek,
hair-like motile cilia cover the surface
of many cells. They make things move:
everything from whole cells (such as the
protozoa seen by Leeuwenhoek) to fluid
in the trachea to an egg along the
fallopian tube.
Motile cilia are not the only
protrusions on cells. Curiously, cells
lacking motile cilia often have a single
cilium on their surface. Named primary
or non-motile cilia, these were once
written off as evolutionary leftovers
with unknown function – the cellular
Want to know more?
• Badano JL et al. The ciliopathies:
an emerging class of human
genetic disorders. Annu Rev
Genomics Hum Genet
2006;7:125–48.
• Tobin JL, Beales PL. The
nonmotile ciliopathies. Genet Med
2009;11(6):386–402.
• Baker K, Beales PL. Making
sense of cilia in disease: the human
ciliopathies. Am J Med Genet C
Semin Med Genet
2009;151C(4):281–95.
• www.ciliopathyalliance.org.uk
Wellcome Trust-funded
researchers working
in this field include:
• Prof. Philip Beales, Institute of
Child Health, UCL.
• Prof. Micheal Cheetham, Institute
of Opthalmology, UCL.
• Dr Martin Knight, Queen Mary,
University of London.
4
equivalent of the appendix. Now, communicate and how we sense our
4
however, primary cilia are gaining surroundings. Their involvement in 8
attention too. limb development, for example, is hinted
Anterograde
In the last decade, research into at by the fact that many non-motile transport Retrograde
diseases caused by defects in cilia – ciliopathies cause additional fingers Cilia and flagella don’t contain transport
ciliopathies – has emerged as a field in its and toes. Other common features include protein-making machinery, so Proteins called dyneins –
own right. Researchers have identified diabetes, obesity, kidney disease, their proteins have to be made molecular motors – move cargo
over 40 genes mutated in ciliopathies, problems with seeing and smelling, in the main body of the cell and down from the tip of the cilium
thought to affect cilia components and bone defects and cognitive impairment. transported into the cilia to build
8 back to the cell. This cargo
functioning (see diagrams). To date, around 20 ciliopathies are and maintain them. Proteins 7 includes kinesins that have
Researchers are studying ciliopathies known, and with some researchers called kinesins – molecular motors delivered their components
to understand what cilia do in normal suggesting that motile and nonmotile – carry proteins from the cell to to the tip of the cilium.
development and functioning. Evidence forms may total over 100, interest in these the tip of the cilium where the
is mounting for the role of primary cilia curious organelles looks set to continue. axoneme is made.
in how our bodies develop, how cells 9
5
Dyneins
See 8 above.
Kinesins
See 4 above.
4 10
1
6 9 Cell membrane
Basal body
The structure from which the
cilium grows. This sits in the
cell membrane, and is made up 5
2 of nine triplets of microtubules
arranged in a ring.
1
Dynein arms
2 10
Cilium cross-section
The structure of cilia, and of the closely related
flagella (the ‘tails’ of sperm), is conserved across
organisms. While motile cilia have nine pairs of
microtubules in a ring surrounding a central pair
(the ‘9 + 2’ arrangement), primary cilia lack the
central pair, showing a 9 + 0 arrangement.
6

26 | WELLCOME NEWS SPRING 2011 | 27

FUNDING INITIATIVES

BY CHRISSIE GILES

PROTECTING THE
POLLINATORS
Insect pollinators, including honeybees, bumblebees and hoverflies,
are in decline. The £10 million Insect Pollinators Initiative – part-
funded by the Wellcome Trust – has been launched to find out why.
We met researchers from three of the nine projects funded to hear
about their plans.

False-coloured scanning electron micrograph of a honeybee (winner of a 2011 Wellcome Image

Award – see page 22). David McCarthy and Annie Cavanagh/Wellcome Images

e all know that bees
make honey, but they
do much more for the
food we eat. Bees and
other insects, including
butterflies and hoverflies,
pollinate plants. By transferring pollen
from the male parts of flowers to the
female parts, they are a vital part of the
process that eventually leads to fruit,
nut and seed production.
For some crops, such as melons,
no pollinators means no fruit. For
others, it means a lesser harvest.
This widespread role of insects in
food production is reflected in insect
pollinators’ economic value – estimated
at €153 billion (£130bn) globally in 2005.1
Pollinators are under threat, though.
Research published in 2006 indicates
that the diversity of wild bees – a key
pollinator group – has declined severely
since the 1980s.2 Another major
pollinator, honeybees, are prone to a
number of diseases. The mite Varroa
destructor, for example, carries viruses
that can quickly destroy entire colonies,
and has spread almost completely
around the world in the last 30 years.
While disease is a serious risk, it
is not the only one pollinators face.
“There’s likely a smorgasbord of
problems,” says Professor Jane
Memmott from the University of
Bristol, a lead investigator on one of
the projects funded by the Initiative.
“And they probably interact
in different ways too – if bees are not
properly fed, then they’re more likely
to catch diseases, and so on.”
The nine projects funded through
the Insect Pollinators Initiative are
setting out to understand these threats
better. We have looked at three below,
and details of all nine can be found at
www.wellcome.ac.uk/pollinators.
How do diseases affect the honeybee,
and could they spread to other bee
species?
“We’ve picked what we think are the
most important disease organisms for
the honeybee,” says Dr Robert Paxton,
from Queen’s University Belfast and the
University of Halle, Germany. His team
is studying deformed wing virus, carried
by the Varroa destructor mite, and a
fungus-like microorganism called
Nosema ceranae.
“Before the Varroa mite came to the
UK, deformed wing virus was found in
maybe 1 in 10 000 colonies,” says Robert.
This changed after its discovery in the
UK in 1992, when the amount of virus
carried by bees increased dramatically.
Varroa is a rusty-coloured mite,
which feeds on the haemolymph
(circulatory fluid) of adult and pupal
bees. This increases the amount of
deformed wing virus carried by bees and
can lead to symptoms including – as the
name suggests – misshapen wings that
prevent bees from flying. The grounded
bees are taken by predators and the
colonies suffer as their numbers drop.
Robert says at least half of the
colonies in the UK contain clinical
symptoms of deformed wing virus –
severe infection with which can lead
to the collapse of colonies.
Nosema, meanwhile, has spread
from East Asia in the last 10–15 years to
the western honeybee. Robert suspects
that the interaction between this and
deformed wing virus may act as a
“double whammy”, greatly increasing
the ill-effects on honeybees. Not only
honeybees are at risk: these diseases
also affect bumblebees, and there are
fears that they will be transmitted to
other pollinators too.
Dr Mark Brown and his team at
Royal Holloway, University of London,
will be investigating how bumblebees
come to be infected with deformed wing
virus and N. ceranae, and the impact that
these emergent diseases have on
individuals and colonies of the
important native bumblebee species.
In their project, researchers are
studying how the diseases affect the bees
physically, and whether they have any
impact on insects’ flight behaviour,
orientation and learning – so-called
sub-lethal effects, which don’t kill the
bees but affect how they function.
“We’re working with Juliet Osborne’s
team at Rothamsted Research that has
very refined methods for tracking how
individual bees fly,” says Robert. “It will
be really nice to understand the impact
of these disease organisms on
individuals.”
Professor Vincent Jansen, also at
Royal Holloway, will use the data
collected to model the spread of the

28 | WELLCOME NEWS SPRING 2011 | 29


“The mite Varroa destructor
carries viruses that can quickly
destroy entire colonies”
disease organisms in the pollinator
community, to try to understand the
threat to both honeybees and
bumblebees.
On top of all these efforts, the team
will also attempt to find ways to treat
these infections. Robert and his
colleagues will be testing the use of
RNAi (RNA interference) methods in
controlling deformed wing virus, an
RNA virus. The technique involves
blocking the multiplication of the virus
and has been effective in other RNA
viruses in honeybees, though it is not
30 | WELLCOME NEWS
completely understood how.
They are also looking in some detail
at the bacterial species associated with
the honeybee gut. Researchers have only
recently discovered that insect guts hold
a huge variety of lactic acid bacteria and
related species, the kind you find in
probiotic yoghurts. They will investigate
whether the two diseases have an impact
on these bacteria, and whether these
bacteria can help overcome the disease
symptoms, particularly those caused
by Nosema, which bees contract by
swallowing spores.
How do pesticides and other
chemicals affect bees’ behaviour?
Pesticides and other agricultural
chemicals used to maximise crop yields
may also be affecting the health of bees.
The treatment of honeybees with
pesticides – miticides – to try to prevent
infestation with the Varroa mite could
be detrimental to their wellbeing.
Dr Chris Connolly is a neurobiologist
at the University of Dundee. Though
usually found investigating the human
brain, he is now applying his expertise
to bees.
“I was thinking about pesticides
and realised that, although people have
looked at the concentrations that kill
pest and non-pest species, so-called
sub-lethal doses may affect how bees
behave. Moreover, there have been no
studies to investigate whether the
sub-lethal effects of multiple pesticides
might create the ‘perfect storm’ through
Bumblebee (Bombus pascuorum) foraging
on red clover. © Claire Carvell, Centre for
Ecology and Hydrology
synergistic interactions,” Chris says.
“I decided that this is more or less
the kind of thing we’ve been doing on
mammalian brain cells, so if we could
apply this to the bee brain, we could find
out if these chemicals have sub-lethal
effects at the level of individual cells,
neural networks, whole animals or
entire colonies.” There are fears that
these exposures may affect the bees’
abilities to move, communicate and
find food.
The Varroa-killing miticides are a
reformulation of the pesticides used
in the field and one of the prime targets
for synergistic toxicity. “If the bees
encounter this and then another
pesticide, then the double hit might
be the problem,” Chris says.
His team is designing assays to study
the effects of different combinations of
pesticide on brain cells. “Our next step
will be to look at neural networks and to
study the effects on the insects’ abilities
to learn at the neuronal level,” he says.
To assess the impact of pesticides,
research in the lab of Dr Geraldine
Wright at Newcastle University (see
below) will investigate how such
chemicals affect learning and memory
in both honeybees and bumblebees.
“After the bees have been exposed to
chemicals, we can ask: are they slower
at learning? Do they forget what they’ve
learned?” says Chris.
This part of the project will involve
the radiotagging of 6000 bees, overseen
by Dr Nigel Raine at Royal Holloway. A
scanner will monitor bees as they enter
and leave the hive. And the bees will be
weighed, allowing researchers to work
out not only each individual bee’s
contribution to the hive throughout its
life but also the performance of the
whole colony throughout a season.
Are British bees getting the
right diet?
Like doing the grocery shopping for
your family, foraging worker bees have
to pick food that’s right not only for
them but also for those back home.
The bee’s shopping list is simpler
though: pollen is the main source
of protein and nectar the main source
of carbohydrate.
“How worker bees choose food is
not well understood,” says Dr Geraldine
Wright from Newcastle University. She
is investigating bee nutrition, and how
a bee’s nutritional state affects how
it forages.
Geraldine is working with Dr
Annie Borland, a plant physiologist at
Newcastle, and Dr Phil Stevenson, from
the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, to
measure the nutritional content of
nectar and pollen from different
agricultural, horticultural and native
UK species.
“We’re looking to find out if bees
need to forage from one or several
different species to achieve their
optimal carbohydrate-to-protein
ratio,” says Geraldine. “One thing
that’s emerging from the work of our
collaborator, Professor Sue Nicolson
at the University of Pretoria in South
Africa, is that workers don’t survive
well on a high-protein diet, but this is in
fact what the brood [the immature bees]
need. It will be really interesting to find
out how much the honeybee has to
disregard its own nutritional state while
it’s foraging.”
While bee nutrition is the focus of
the project, research by Geraldine’s
laboratory is mainly around
understanding the mechanisms
of learning and memory. She and
her colleagues have been using the
honeybee as a model for some time,
and are bringing that knowledge to
their new project.
“We don’t know a lot about nutrition
and how it influences learning and
memory. This project will allow us to
understand exactly what honeybees
and bumblebees need, in terms of pollen
and nectar, but also how their foraging
can feed back on to what they do when
they’re learning.” For example, she says,
if a bee is low on protein in its diet, is it
more likely to learn to associate a floral
scent with an amino acid (which proteins
are made of) than with a sugar?
With Professor Sharoni Shafir at the
Hebrew University, Israel, Geraldine will
be investigating how bees weigh rewards
– or, as she describes it: “We’re going to
look at how nutrition affects the
cognitive behavioural decisions that
forager bees have to make when they’re
out doing the shopping.”
• Dr Robert Paxton is working with Dr Mark Brown
(Royal Holloway, University of London) and
Dr Juliet Osborne (Rothamsted Research).
• Dr Chris Connolly is working with Dr Jenni
Harvey (University of Dundee), Dr Nigel Raine
(Royal Holloway), Dr Geraldine Wright (Newcastle
University) and Professor Neil Millar (UCL).
• Dr Geraldine Wright is working with Dr Phil
Stevenson (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), Dr Annie
Borland (Newcastle University), Prof. Sue Nicolson
(University of Pretoria), Prof. Sharoni Shafir
(Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Prof.
Steve Simpson (University of Sydney).
1. Gallai N et al. Economic valuation of the
vulnerability of world agriculture confronted
with pollinator decline. Ecological Economics
2009;68(3):810–21.
2. Biesmeijer JC et al. Parallel declines in pollinators
and insect-pollinated plants in Britain and the
Netherlands. Science 2006;313(5785):351–4.
The Insect Pollinators Iniatitive is
supported by the Biotechnology
and Biological Sciences Research
Council, the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs, the Natural Environment
Research Council, the Scottish
Government and the Wellcome
Trust, under the auspices of the
Living With Environmental
Change partnership.
SPRING 2011 | 31
FROM THE ARCHIVE What is it?
Published in 1493, the book is a history
chronicle that follows Biblical lines,
beginning with the Creation and ending
BY ROSS MACFARLANE with the Last Judgement. The largest
section, however, consists of scenes of

NUREMBERG contemporary life and contains many

illustrations of European places. The
book was produced in Nuremberg –

CHRONICLE then the centre of the German book

trade. The city is afforded a double-page
spread (shown) and the book is known
in English as the Nuremberg Chronicle.

Why is it so special?
Due to the variety of the integration
of its text and images, the Nuremberg
Chronicle has been hailed as the most
sophisticated printed book published
before 1500. It’s recognised as one of the
treasures of the Wellcome Library’s Rare
Books Collection.

What’s the Wellcome link?

Written in Latin by Hartmann Schedel,
a physician, the book was purchased by
Henry Wellcome in 1898 at Sotheby’s for
£20.10s., at an auction of the library of
the artist and designer William Morris.
This was a major early purchase for
Wellcome, made at a time when he was
as interested in books that could inspire
designs for advertisements for his
pharmaceutical business, as in artefacts
relating to the history of medicine.

Can you see it?

The Chronicle is held in closed access
in the Wellcome Library, but it can be
ordered through the Library catalogue.
A modern facsimile is also available on
the Library’s open shelves.

Find out more online at

library.wellcome.ac.uk

32 | WELLCOME NEWS SPRING 2011 | 33


APPLIANCE OF SCIENCE
“It’s all about bringing real life into art – literally”
MARC QUINN
or me, science is important,
but this isn’t true for all artists.
Some have no interest in science
at all – and they make a different
kind of art.
I’m interested in bringing real life into
art in some way – literally. With the blood head,
‘Self’, I was trying to think of an organ that could
be harvested without killing the host. You can take
blood out and the body will rebuild it. You have a
sense of the wonder of the way that the body can
re-create itself. It’s a metaphor for life and death.
For the work I’ve done using DNA, it just so
happened that, at that moment, the same
philosophical questions interested me and
interested science. For example, the idea of DNA
as the instructions for building someone, and
the question of how complexity evolved out of a
binary code.
I worked with Professor Sir John Sulston to
create a portrait of him that contained his DNA.
That was very interesting – I went to meet him
with no preconceptions about what to make. He
showed me around the Wellcome Trust Sanger
Institute, and it was through his eyes seeing how
everything worked that I came up with the ideas
for the portrait. It was a literal collaboration too,
because I got some of his DNA.
Plus You can see Marc’s work ‘Silvia Petretti – Sustiva, Tenofivir, 3TC (HIV)’ at Wellcome Collection.
34 | WELLCOME NEWS
Mary McCartney
DIARY Senior Research Fellowships in
Courses, conferences and workshops
Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, unless Basic Biomedical Science
otherwise specified. For more, see www.wellcome.ac.uk/
advancedcourses and www.wellcome.ac.uk/conferences
Applied Bioinformatics and Public Health Microbiology
Conference, 1–3 June
Molecular Biology of Hearing and Deafness
Conference, 6–9 July
Proteomics Bioinformatics
Workshop, 15–19 July
Human Genome Analysis: Genetic analysis of
multifactorial diseases
Course, 23–29 July
From Beads on a String to the Pearls of Regulation:
Derren Ready, Eastman Dental Institute/Wellcome Images
The structure and dynamics of chromatin
Conference, 3–4 August
Wellcome Trust School on Biology of Social Cognition
Conference, 14–21 August
The Leena Peltonen School of Human Genomics
Conference, 21–25 August
The Genomics of Common Diseases
Conference, 30 August–2 September
A lot of artwork to do with DNA was so boringly Molecular Approaches to Clinical Microbiology in Africa
illustrative, it doesn’t really tell you anything to Course, Malawi–Liverpool–Wellcome Trust Clinical Research William Henry
draw a double helix. It was very interesting to Programme, Blantyre, Malawi, 10–16 September
actually get to the nitty-gritty and work with the
Epigenomics of Common Diseases
actual stuff – that gave it a reality.
Conference, 13–16 September Senior Research Fellowships
I am continuing to work with the body as
inspiration. I’ve just done a series of paintings of Next Generation Sequencing in Basic Biomedical Science
people’s irises, which are close-ups, 2 to 4 metres Workshop, 2–10 October Candidates are expected to
wide. You get an image that is at once incredibly
Functional Genomics and Systems Biology have an excellent track record
colourful and abstract in a way, but also a complete
Conference, 29 November–1 December in their scientific field and be
signifier of identity in the way that DNA is, because
an iris doesn’t change. In the middle you have this able to demonstrate their ability
Wellcome Collection events and exhibitions to carry out independent
black hole, which, to me, signifies the void and
Euston Road, London. www.wellcomecollection.org research.
mystery of life.
Science and art are two very different things. Deadline for preliminary
Dirt: The filthy reality of everyday life
Science wishes to discover facts about the world,
Exhibition, 24 March–31 August applications: 6 June 2011.
art is about creating objects of philosophical
meditation and emotional communication, again, Elements www.wellcome.ac.uk/uksrf/wn
about what it is to be a person living in the world. Event, 8 April
But they coincide in that they’re both interested in
Supper Salon
the mysteries of life: where do we come from? What
Event, 13 April
are we made of? Who are we? Where do we go when
we die? These questions are common questions – Tell it to Your Doctor
but art doesn’t find answers, it just poses a question Events, 16 & 21 April
in a new way.
Born Today
Events, 28 April & 5 May
Find out more at www.marcquinn.com
IN YOUR NEXT ISSUE
MRI scanner in ‘Nuts and Bolts’ and updates on our
funding and research activities.
SPRING 2011 | 35
 A FREE DESTINATION FOR
TUESDAY–SUNDAY (UNTIL 18.00)
LATE-NIGHT THURSDAY (UNTIL 22.00)
183 EUSTON ROAD, NW1
THE INCURABLY CURIOUS EUSTON, EUSTON SQUARE

The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life

Free exhibition
Until 31 August

This exhibition and accompanying events are part of a Wellcome Trust season of activity at
special dirty locations across the UK, including the Eden Project, Glasgow, Glastonbury and
other summer festivals. Wellcome Collection is part of the Wellcome Trust.
www.wellcomecollection.org/dirt
The Wellcome Trust is a charity registered in England and Wales, no. 210183. PU-5047.36/03-2011/MD