Anne Dell

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Professor Anne Dell
Born (1950-09-11) 11 September 1950 (age 72)
Perth, Western Australia
CitizenshipAustralian, British
Alma mater
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsBiochemistry
Institutions Imperial College London
Thesis Peptide and protein sequencing by mass spectrometry (1975)
Doctoral advisor Howard R. Morris

Anne Dell CBE FRS FMedSci (born 11 September 1950) [1] is an Australian biochemist specialising in the study of glycomics and the carbohydrate structures that modify proteins. [2] Anne's work could be used to figure out how pathogens such as HIV are able to evade termination by the immune system which could be applied toward understanding how this occurs in fetuses. Her research has also led to the development of higher sensitivity mass spectroscopy techniques which have allowed for the better studying of the structure of carbohydrates. Anne also established GlycoTRIC [3] at Imperial College London, a research center that allows for glycobiology to be better understood in biomedical applications. She is currently Professor of Carbohydrate Biochemistry and Head of the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London. [4] Dell's other contributions to the study of Glycobiology are the additions she has made to the textbook "Essentials of Glycobiology" [5] Dell was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours. [6]

Contents

Early life

Anne Dell was the youngest of seven children and grew up on a farm in the Australian outback, where she was educated at home by her mother using Correspondence School lessons until the age of eleven. She earned a First Class Honors degree in Organic Chemistry from the University of Western Australia, and came to the UK to carry out her PhD at the University of Cambridge, before joining Imperial College where she is currently employed. She also has a daughter, who was born in 1984. [7] [8] [9]

Education and research

After gaining a First Class Honors degree (equivalent to B.S) in Organic Chemistry from the University of Western Australia, Dell was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship to study for a PhD at the University of Cambridge. [10] [9] After she was awarded her PhD in 1975 her doctoral supervisor, Howard R. Morris, moved to Imperial College London as a lecturer in biochemistry and brought Dell with him. [11] She would remain at Imperial for the rest of her career. [9] Anne was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 2002 and was appointed a CBE in recognition of her services to science in 2009. Other honors include election to Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Membership of the European Academy of Science. She has Honorary Doctorates from the University of Western Australia and the University of Waterloo in Canada. In 2017 Dell and her colleagues determined in their experiment that O-linked glycosylation is not necessary for the natural replication cycle of HIV. They also determined that the diversity of the many GalNAc transferase enzymes that initiate O-linked carbohydrate attachment and the theoretical possibility that natural target cells for HIV in vivo could potentially complete such O-linked carbohydrate attachment to increase infectivity further. [12] Dell's other contributions to the study of Glycobiology are the additions she has made to chapter 50 of the textbook "Essentials of Glycobiology" this chapter gave methods for the characterization of glycan structure, including residue composition, linkage types, and attachment to aglycones. It covered methods for detection of specific glycan sequences on glycoproteins and it covers methods for characterizing structures in three dimensions. The methods varied widely and included nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry (MS) techniques that allow more detailed structures to be observed in the study of Glycobiology. [5]

Honors and awards

Related Research Articles

Glycomics is the comprehensive study of glycomes, including genetic, physiologic, pathologic, and other aspects. Glycomics "is the systematic study of all glycan structures of a given cell type or organism" and is a subset of glycobiology. The term glycomics is derived from the chemical prefix for sweetness or a sugar, "glyco-", and was formed to follow the omics naming convention established by genomics and proteomics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glycoprotein</span> Protein with oligosaccharide modifications

Glycoproteins are proteins which contain oligosaccharide chains covalently attached to amino acid side-chains. The carbohydrate is attached to the protein in a cotranslational or posttranslational modification. This process is known as glycosylation. Secreted extracellular proteins are often glycosylated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glycome</span>

The glycome is the entire complement of sugars, whether free or present in more complex molecules, of an organism. An alternative definition is the entirety of carbohydrates in a cell. The glycome may in fact be one of the most complex entities in nature. "Glycomics, analogous to genomics and proteomics, is the systematic study of all glycan structures of a given cell type or organism" and is a subset of glycobiology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Consortium for Functional Glycomics</span>

The Consortium for Functional Glycomics (CFG) is a large research initiative funded in 2001 by a glue grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) to “define paradigms by which protein-carbohydrate interactions mediate cell communication”. To achieve this goal, the CFG studies the functions of:

Defined in the narrowest sense, glycobiology is the study of the structure, biosynthesis, and biology of saccharides that are widely distributed in nature. Sugars or saccharides are essential components of all living things and aspects of the various roles they play in biology are researched in various medical, biochemical and biotechnological fields.

Glycosylation is the reaction in which a carbohydrate, i.e. a glycosyl donor, is attached to a hydroxyl or other functional group of another molecule in order to form a glycoconjugate. In biology, glycosylation usually refers to an enzyme-catalysed reaction, whereas glycation may refer to a non-enzymatic reaction. Glycosylation is a form of co-translational and post-translational modification. Glycans serve a variety of structural and functional roles in membrane and secreted proteins. The majority of proteins synthesized in the rough endoplasmic reticulum undergo glycosylation. Glycosylation is also present in the cytoplasm and nucleus as the O-GlcNAc modification. Aglycosylation is a feature of engineered antibodies to bypass glycosylation. Five classes of glycans are produced:

An oligosaccharide is a saccharide polymer containing a small number of monosaccharides. Oligosaccharides can have many functions including cell recognition and cell adhesion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fucose</span> Chemical compound

Fucose is a hexose deoxy sugar with the chemical formula C6H12O5. It is found on N-linked glycans on the mammalian, insect and plant cell surface. Fucose is the fundamental sub-unit of the seaweed polysaccharide fucoidan. The α(1→3) linked core of fucose is a suspected carbohydrate antigen for IgE-mediated allergy.

The terms glycans and polysaccharides are defined by IUPAC as synonyms meaning "compounds consisting of a large number of monosaccharides linked glycosidically". However, in practice the term glycan may also be used to refer to the carbohydrate portion of a glycoconjugate, such as a glycoprotein, glycolipid, or a proteoglycan, even if the carbohydrate is only an oligosaccharide. Glycans usually consist solely of O-glycosidic linkages of monosaccharides. For example, cellulose is a glycan composed of β-1,4-linked D-glucose, and chitin is a glycan composed of β-1,4-linked N-acetyl-D-glucosamine. Glycans can be homo- or heteropolymers of monosaccharide residues, and can be linear or branched.

Glycoproteomics is a branch of proteomics that identifies, catalogs, and characterizes proteins containing carbohydrates as a result of post-translational modifications. Glycosylation is the most common post-translational modification of proteins, but continues to be the least studied on the proteome level. Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique used to improve the study of these proteins on the proteome level. Glycosylation contributes to several concerted biological mechanisms essential to maintaining physiological function. The study of the glycosylation of proteins is important to understanding certain diseases, like cancer, because a connection between a change in glycosylation and these diseases has been discovered. To study this post-translational modification of proteins, advanced mass spectrometry techniques based on glycoproteomics have been developed to help in terms of therapeutic applications and the discovery of biomarkers.

Glycopeptides are peptides that contain carbohydrate moieties (glycans) covalently attached to the side chains of the amino acid residues that constitute the peptide.

Translational glycobiology or applied glycobiology is the branch of glycobiology and glycochemistry that focuses on developing new pharmaceuticals through glycomics and glycoengineering. Although research in this field presents many difficulties, translational glycobiology presents applications with therapeutic glycoconjugates, with treating various bone diseases, and developing therapeutic cancer vaccines and other targeted therapies. Some mechanisms of action include using the glycan for drug targeting, engineering protein glycosylation for better efficacy, and glycans as drugs themselves.

Sabine Flitsch is a German organic chemist and chemical biologist who holds a personal chair in Chemical Biology at the University of Manchester School of Chemistry, where she runs an active research glycobiology research group based in the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre.

Ten Feizi is a British molecular biologist who is Professor and Director of the Glycosciences Laboratory at Imperial College London. Her research considers the structure and function of glycans. She was awarded the Society for Glycobiology Rosalind Kornfeld award in 2014. She was also awarded the Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glycan-protein interactions</span> Class of biological intermolecular interactions

Glycan-Protein interactions represent a class of biomolecular interactions that occur between free or protein-bound glycans and their cognate binding partners. Intramolecular glycan-protein (protein-glycan) interactions occur between glycans and proteins that they are covalently attached to. Together with protein-protein interactions, they form a mechanistic basis for many essential cell processes, especially for cell-cell interactions and host-cell interactions. For instance, SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, employs its extensively glycosylated spike (S) protein to bind to the ACE2 receptor, allowing it to enter host cells. The spike protein is a trimeric structure, with each subunit containing 22 N-glycosylation sites, making it an attractive target for vaccine search.

Katherine Jane Doores is a British biochemist who is a senior lecturer in the School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences at King's College London. During the COVID-19 pandemic Doores studied the levels of antibodies in patients who had suffered from COVID-19.

Tracey Maureen Gloster is a chemist at the University of St Andrews UK. Her research interests are in structural biology, chemical biology, glycobiology and carbohydrate processing enzymes.

Elizabeth Fay Hounsell was a British Professor of Biological Chemistry, Birkbeck, University of London. She specialised in the role of protein glycosylation in cell regulation.

Nicki Packer FRSC is a Distinguished Professor of Glycoproteomics in the School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University and Principal Research Leader at Griffith University's Institute for Glycomics. Packer is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and in 2021 received the Distinguished Achievement in Proteomic Sciences Award from the Human Proteome Organization. Her research focuses on biological functional of glycoproteins by linking glycomics with proteomics and bioinformatics.

Pauline Rudd is a British biochemist and Professor at the Microbiome Institute, University College Cork. She is a founder of Wessex Biochemicals, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and was awarded the James Gregory Medal in 2010.

References

  1. ↑ "Birthdays". The Guardian . Guardian News & Media. 11 September 2014. p. 43.
  2. ↑ "Sex, immunity ... and carbohydrates". The Guardian. 25 October 2001. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
  3. ↑ "The Glycobiology Training, Research and Infrastructure Centre | Research groups | Imperial College London". www.imperial.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
  4. ↑ "Professor Anne Dell". Imperial College London. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
  5. 1 2 Mulloy, Barbara; Dell, Anne; Stanley, Pamela; H. Prestegard, James (2015). "Structural Analysis of Glycans". In Varki, Ajit; Cummings, Richard D.; Esko, Jeffrey D.; Stanley, Pamela; Hart, Gerald W.; Aebi, Markus; Darvill, Alan G.; Kinoshita, Taroh; Packer, Nicolle H. (eds.). Essentials of Glycobiology (3rd ed.). Cold Spring Harbor (NY): Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. doi:10.1101/glycobiology.3e.050 (inactive 31 December 2022). PMID   28876844.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of December 2022 (link)
  6. ↑ "No. 59090". The London Gazette (Supplement). 13 June 2009. p. 7.
  7. ↑ Gross, Michael (2015). The Encyclopedia of Mass Spectrometry: Volume 9: Historical Perspectives, Part B: Notable People in Mass Spectrometry. Amsterdam: Elsevier. p. 51. ISBN   978-0-08-100379-4.
  8. ↑ "Professor Anne Dell". Speakers 4 Schools. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
  9. 1 2 3 "Spotlight: Professor Anne Dell" (PDF). Reporter. Imperial College London. 23 October 2015. p. 10. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
  10. ↑ "Professor Anne Dell CBE FRS FMedSci" (PDF). Glycobiology.org. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
  11. ↑ Gay, Hannah (2007). The history of Imperial College London, 1907-2007 : higher education and research in science, technology and medicine. New York: Imperial College Press. p. 505. ISBN   978-1-86094-709-4.
  12. ↑ Termini, James M.; Church, Elizabeth S.; Silver, Zachary A.; Haslam, Stuart M.; Dell, Anne; Desrosiers, Ronald C. (1 October 2017). "Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Maintain High Levels of Infectivity in the Complete Absence of Mucin-Type O-Glycosylation". Journal of Virology. 91 (19). doi:10.1128/JVI.01228-17. ISSN   1098-5514. PMC   5599749 . PMID   28747495.

Bibliography

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