15 May 2012	Film Night: Contagion (2011) A thriller centred on the threat posed by a deadly disease and an international team of doctors contracted by the CDC to deal with the outbreak. Starring Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kate Winslet. Rotten Tomatoes stated "tense, tightly plotted, and bolstered by a stellar cast, Contagion is an exceptionally smart—and scary—disaster movie." Many scientists have praised the accurate depictions of medical and scientific practices in the film. 20:00   ·   Junior Combination Room
5 May 2012	Film Night: Gattaca (1999) A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel. Starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law, Gattaca was nominated for the 1997 Academy Award for Best Art Direction. In a review for Nature Genetics, molecular biologist Lee M Silver stated that "Gattaca is a film that all geneticists should see if for no other reason than to understand the perception of our trade held by so many of the public-at-large," while Roger Ebert said "this is one of the smartest and most provocative of science fiction films, a thriller with ideas." 20:00   ·   Junior Combination Room
13 Mar 2012	Professor David Tong speaking on The Higgs and the Cosmological Constant: They're Just Not Natural The Higgs boson explains why all particles have mass. The cosmological constant explains why the expansion of the Universe is speeding up. Yet both explanations suffer from a problem that theoretical physicists call "naturalness". In this talk I will describe the Higgs boson and the cosmological constant and explain why both these phenomena are so very puzzling. Resolving these puzzles is one of the major open problems in theoretical physics. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
8 Mar 2012	Dr Jason Chin speaking on Reprogramming the Genetic Code (joint event with BioSoc) The information for synthesizing the molecules that allow organisms to survive and replicate is encoded in genomic DNA. In the cell, DNA is copied to messenger RNA, and triplet codons (64) in the messenger RNA are decoded - in the process of translation - to synthesize polymers of the natural 20 amino acids. This process (DNA RNA protein) describes the central dogma of molecular biology and is conserved in terrestrial life. We are interested in re-writing the central dogma to create organisms that synthesize proteins containing unnatural amino acids and polymers composed of monomer building blocks beyond the 20 natural amino acids. I will discuss our invention and synthetic evolution of new 'orthogonal' translational components (including ribosomes and aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases) to address the major challenges in re-writing the central dogma of biology. I will discuss the application of the approaches we have developed for incorporating unnatural amino acids into proteins and investigating and synthetically controlling diverse biological processes, with a particular emphasis on understanding the role of post-translational modifications. 19:00   ·   Large Lecture Theatre, Plant Sciences
6 Mar 2012	Professor Sir Michael Atiyah speaking on The Apprenticeship of a Scientist What is research? How does one start? What are the crucial choices? I will address such issues based on my personal experiences and will be happy to turn the event into a discussion forum. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
28 Feb 2012	Professor Simon Baron-Cohen speaking on Zero Degrees of Empathy Empathy is the drive to identify another person’s thoughts and feelings and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. Empathy comes by degrees, with individual differences evident in the traditional bell curve. We now know quite a lot about which parts of the brain are used when we empathize and how empathy develops in children. We also know that early experience affects empathy, but so does biology: hormones in the womb, and specific genes. There are several ways in which one can lose one’s empathy, clearly seen in psychiatric conditions such as the personality disorders including the psychopath. However, there is one condition, autism, which not only entails difficulties with empathy but can lead to a talent in ‘systemizing’: the aptitude to spot patterns in the world. We discuss how people with autism and psychopaths show opposite empathy profiles. Finally, the discovery that there may be ‘genes for empathy’ implies that empathy may be the result of our evolution. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
23 Feb 2012	Professor David Nutt speaking on Science and Non-science in UK Drug and Alcohol Policy The regulation of drugs – including alcohol and tobacco – is an issue of pressing importance due to the increasing health care costs associated with their use and the new sorts of synthetic agents being developed and sold over the internet. My talk will reflect on these issues in the light of my ten years experience on the governments Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs from which I was sacked about a year ago. I shall present new analyses that compare the harms of drugs and alcohol using more sophisticated methodology and challenge many of the current misconceptions about drugs – their harms – and how to deal with them. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
21 Feb 2012	Professor Shankar Balasubramanian speaking on Decoding Genomes at High Speed There has recently been a quantum leap in our ability to accurately decode human genome sequences at an unprecedented speed and cost. This technological advancement is transforming biology and is bringing to the forefront the possibility of individualising medicine based on our genomes. In this talk I will discuss the origins of this technology revolution, how it is changing science and a vision for how it may shape medicine over the next 20 years. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
14 Feb 2012	Sir Greg Winter speaking on The Antibody Revolution: Turning Inventions Into Medicines and Companies In recent years therapeutic antibodies have been displacing small molecule drugs as blockbuster pharmaceuticals, and large pharmaceutical companies have been buying the biotechnology companies that developed them. The talk will explain how this revolution started and where it may lead. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
7 Feb 2012	Professor Sir John Pendry speaking on The Science of Invisibility Electromagnetism encompasses much of modern technology. Its influence rests on our ability to deploy materials that can control the component electric and magnetic fields. A new class of materials has created some extraordinary possibilities such as a negative refractive index, and lenses whose resolution is limited only by the precision with which we can manufacture them. Cloaks have been designed and built that hide objects within them, but remain completely invisible to external observers. The new materials, named metamaterials, have properties determined as much by their internal physical structure as by their chemical composition and the radical new properties to which they give access promise to transform our ability to control much of the electromagnetic spectrum. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
31 Jan 2012	Dr Martin Hanczyc speaking on What Can a Simple Oil Droplet Teach Us About Life? I study abstract simple systems that are far removed from biology, yet demonstrate some phenomenology of living systems. Small oil droplets running around in a dish are using purely chemical and physical mechanisms to move, explore, and modify their environment. By moving, the droplets are able to avoid for a longer time a kind of chemical death where they become mired in their waste products, shutting down their metabolism and stopping movement indefinitely. In a way the motile droplets are actively avoiding equilibrium and while doing so appear to demonstrate lively behaviors, such as droplets circling or following each other in a kind of dance. Beyond these life-like behaviors, the droplets bear little similarity to living organisms. Existing natural organisms are not oil based and they do not use the same mechanism of movement. In this sense the droplets could be termed artificial. Such simple non-living artificial systems capable of living properties may be useful as a technology, especially since they do not need to contain DNA and therefore do not have many of the risk and ethical concerns of for example genetically modified organisms. Several diverse types of chemical droplets show self-movement, including models that try to capture an essential aspect of the origin of life. The experiments using a primordial tar as fuel to drive droplet movement is an example of this. It has long been considered that self-assembly of the right recipe of molecules into structures that are essentially living cells are all that is needed for life to spontaneously form. However despite over 100 years of experimentation with self-assembled systems, no one has been able to demonstrate the creation of artificial life. The oil droplet system teaches us that some mechanism other than self-assembly may be necessary for the formation of life, in this case that mechanism is self-movement. By this mechanism the primitive cell (or protocell) enters into an active communication with its environment while it searches for resources while at the same time remodeling its environment, much like living organisms do. Another mechanism to avoid equilibrium could be replication. Only by creating such simple experimental models can one begin to test hypothesis not only about the origin of life but also about the very nature of living systems. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
26 Jan 2012	Professor Elliot Meyerowitz speaking on How Plants Grow: New Principles of Development from Live Imaging and Computational Modelling Plants grow from meristems, collections of stem cells found at the apical tip of each shoot, and at the base of each root. The shoot apical meristem of flowering plants is the source all of the parts of the plant found above ground, and therefore is responsible for most of our food, fiber, and even atmospheric oxygen. How this collection of a few hundred stem cells makes, over time, a highly patterned plant, with dozens of cell types, is under study. Recent investigations directed to understanding the origin of the pattern of leaves around each stem in the laboratory plant Arabidopsis thaliana have involved live imaging using laser scanning confocal microscopy, and computational modelling of cell-cell interactions. These studies have led to a detailed model of pattern formation at the shoot apex, and to some surprises: a new class of developmental model, and the discovery that leaf pattern results from feedbacks between chemical signals and physical forces in growing tissues. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
29 Nov 2011	Dr Jonathan Nitschke speaking on Molecular Systems Architecture: From Complexity to Function Nature employs self-assembly – the bringing together of molecular sub-units under thermodynamic control, during which less-stable assemblies are broken up in favour of the most stable assemblies – to construct her most complex architectures, from the folds and adhesions that lend tertiary and quaternary structure to proteins, to the zipping-up of DNA. Within living organisms many different self-assembly processes are continuously occurring in parallel. These processes use many of the same interactions (such as hydrogen bonding, Coulombic attraction or repulsion, or hydrophobic effects) in similar ways, yet these parallel self-assembly processes are able to avoid interfering with each other. One strand of our research programme seeks to decipher the complex rule sets followed by abiological building blocks as they self-assemble within systems. Once understood, these rule sets may be used to create either single complex architectures, in which individual building blocks might at first glance have several possible destinations, but where hierarchies of rules collectively direct the system to produce a single product, or systems of structures that share common building blocks and self-assembly processes, yet which self-assemble without interfering with each other. Systems of the second type may be induced to reassemble in complex ways upon the addition of a single new building block, as the incorporation of this building block causes one structure to rearrange, releasing other building blocks that may induce the rearrangement of other structures within the system. The study of such cascade processes, and the deciphering of complex self-assembly rules more generally, may help shed light upon the underpinnings of biological complexity. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
26 Nov 2011	Film Night: Solaris (1972) Starring: Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Jüri Järvet, and Vladislav Dvorzhetsky. 20:00   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
22 Nov 2011	Dr Philipp Holliger speaking on Replicating RNA with RNA A critical event in the origin of life is thought to have been the emergence of an RNA molecule capable of self-replication as well as mutation, and hence evolution towards ever more efficient replication. As this primordial replicase appears to be have been lost in time, we are using synthetic biology to build modern-day “Doppelgangers” of the ancestral replicase to reconstruct and study life’s first genetic system. I will discuss our progress in the engineering and evolution of an RNA replicase as well as future challenges such as the integration of RNA self-replication within protocellular structures with a view to build simple quasicellular systems with life-like properties. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
15 Nov 2011	Professor Bob Nichol speaking on Dark Energy: A Lot of Fuss About Nothing About a decade ago, astronomers and cosmologists were shocked to discover that the expansion of the Universe was accelerating, contrary to expectations that gravity would lead to a decelerating Universe. This discovery has lead to the introduction of "Dark Energy"; a proposed energy field potentially associated with the vacuum energy of space itself. In this talk, I will begin by reviewing the observations of the Universe that have forced us to accept Dark Energy. I will then outline the next steps in understanding the strange phenomenon including testing our fundamental assumptions of General Relativity and exploring how dark energy may change to time. Time permitting, I will conclude with a look at the next decade of dark energy experiments. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
8 Nov 2011	Dr Jan Löwe speaking on The Bacterial Cytoskeleton ParM filament condensation and unidirectional elongation leads to bipolar plasmid segregation. Low copy-number plasmids utilise partitioning systems for the segregation of DNA to the two daughter cells. R1 plasmid contains the ParMRC system, comprising of a centromeric DNA region parC, an actin-like protein ParM and the adaptor protein ParR that binds to the ParM filaments and parC. ParMRC forms a bipolar spindle by growing a filament between the sister plasmids, pushing them to the poles. Here we show that ParR binding locks ParM into a filament-like conformation, functioning similar to eukaryotic actin polymerising proteins. ParR binding is restricted to the barbed-end of the ParM filament, leading to unidirectional elongation, only. ParM filaments condense and slide against each other to and this property is likely to stabilise two or more antiparallel ParM filaments, stabilised at the barbed-end by the ParRC complex. This then leads to the formation of a bipolar spindle, comprised of a bundle of growing and sliding filaments, pushing plasmids in opposite direction. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
1 Nov 2011	Professor Michael Green speaking on String Theory: A Unifying Principle in Theoretical Physics String theory evolved as a framework for describing the elementary particles and their interactions in a unified manner. It has a number of distinctive features that give it a degree of consistency and a mathematical elegance that earlier theories do not possess. Recent developments suggest that string theory has an even wider role in theoretical physics, making remarkable interconnections between apparently very different areas – for example, relating phenomena in condensed matter physics to properties of black holes. This talk will give a (very) elementary introduction to the background of these ideas. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
29 Oct 2011	Film Night: Blade Runner (1982) Starring: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, and Daryl Hannah. 20:00   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
25 Oct 2011	Professor William McGrew speaking on Chasing Wild Chimpanzees: Forty Years of African Field Study Chimpanzees inhabit a wide variety of habitats in sub-Saharan Africa, from rain forest to savanna. Their behaviour, whether in subsistence or sociality, varies greatly too. To understand this diversity requires careful comparative study, seeking data on differences and similarities across populations. I have pursued these aims from Senegal to Tanzania, and published books and articles accordingly. However, this talk describes and illustrates what lies behind the science, what never appears in journals, about what the research entails. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
18 Oct 2011	Dr Michael de Podesta speaking on How Do You Really Know What the Temperature Is? The definition of the unit of temperature is about to change. At the National Physical Laboratory I have been making the most accurate temperature measurements ever made so that, hopefully, you won't notice the difference. 18:15   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
15 Oct 2011	Film Night: Dr Strangelove (1964) Starring: Peter Sellers, George C Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, and Slim Pickens. 20:00   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
13 Oct 2011	Professor Dianne Newman speaking on How Do We Learn About Life On Earth Billions of Years Ago? The Earth was formed ~4.6 billion years ago (Ga), and traces of ancient life can be found as far back at 3.8 Ga. What was life like in the remote past? What metabolisms were used to sustain growth? When did critical metabolisms that changed our planet evolve, such as oxygenic photosynthesis (the ability to convert water to molecular oxygen)? In this lecture, I will discuss how geobiologists approach these questions, illustrating the challenges we face in making meaningful inferences about the nature of life so long ago. In particular, I will discuss my research group's efforts to properly interpret the meaning of a specific type of biomarker called a "2-methyl-hopane", which for many years was thought to mark the rise of oxygenic photosynthesis, but which we now have evidence to suggest represents an entirely different evolutionary process. 18:15   ·   Old Combination Room
5 Oct 2011	Freshers' Fair A second chance to come see our stall at the Freshers' Fair, sign up to our mailing list, and pick up a term card to pin on your wall. 10:00   ·   Kelsey Kerridge (second floor)
4 Oct 2011	Film Night: District 9 (2009) Starring: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, David James, Nathalie Boltt, and Vittorio Leonardi. 20:00   ·   Winstanley Lecture Theatre
4 Oct 2011	Freshers' Fair Come see our stall at the Freshers' Fair, sign up to our mailing list, and pick up a term card to pin on your wall. 10:00   ·   Kelsey Kerridge (second floor)
2 Oct 2011	Chaplain's Squash A chance for new Trinity members to sign up to our mailing list. 21:15   ·   Nevile's Court

Previous presentations

Some of our speakers have kindly allowed us to host a copy of their presentations on our website — the available PowerPoint files are listed below:

18-10-2011 : Michael de Podesta — How Do You Really Know What the Temperature Is?

15-11-2011 : Bob Nichol — Dark Energy: A Lot of Fuss About Nothing

29-11-2011 : Jonathan Nitschke — Molecular Systems Architecture: From Complexity to Function