| EPSRC Reference: |
EP/H024425/1 |
| Title: |
Elements of a Vesicle Machine |
| Principal Investigator: |
Ces, Professor O |
| Other Investigators: |
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| Researcher Co-Investigators: |
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| Project Partners: |
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| Department: |
Chemistry |
| Organisation: |
Imperial College London |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research |
| Starts: |
01 January 2010 |
Ends: |
31 March 2011 |
Value (£): |
201,409
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
| Chemical Biology |
Control Engineering |
| Synthetic biology |
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| EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
| No relevance to Underpinning Sectors |
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| Related Grants: |
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| Panel History: |
| Panel Date | Panel Name | Outcome |
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11 Sep 2009
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Cross-Disciplinary Feasibility Account
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Announced
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
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Despite cells being thought of as the smallest unit of life, they are actually made up smaller components that give them the ability to perform functions such as self-repair, and produce and harness energy. These components consists of large collections of proteins and lipids, the building blocks of cells, that actually work together to create higher level functions. A useful analogy is that of a city and a cell. A city often requires a wall (an outer lipid membrane), power plants (mitochondria from animal cells, and chloroplasts from plant cells) and factories and engineering firms to repair the city infrastructure (lipid homeostatic machinery). Each of these units is run by workers and machinery (lipids and proteins).In this project, we aim to take apart cells, but not at the level of the workers , instead at the level of the city infrastructure and bring them back together in a different combination with a view to constructing a new city (novel self-assembling micron scale machinery). These components, that we will be 'hi-jacking' from cells will be housed within artificial lipid vesicles that will provide a housing which mimics the ability of cells to ring-fence and protect their infrastructure. It is not yet known which components can be coupled in this manner and this is something that we aim to explore.
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Key Findings |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
| Summary |
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| Date Materialised |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.imperial.ac.uk |