University of Nottingham

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

Soil compaction represents a major challenge facing modern agriculture. When combined with other stresses like drought, soil compaction can reduce crop yields by up to 75% and causes billions of Euros in losses annually. The GROUNDBREAKING project addresses how plant roots sense different levels of soil compaction and modify their growth. This Project builds on my recent discovery that root responses to a high level of soil compaction are controlled by the gaseous signal "ethylene" (Pandey et al., 2021, Science, Huang et al., 2022, PNAS). However, agriculture soils vary greatly in terms of their hardness. Europe, in addition to 36-million hectares of highly compacted soil, contains 25-million-hectares of soil prone to medium compaction. Therefore, discovering which signalling pathways control root sensing of low to medium and high to very high levels of soil compaction is vital for developing more climate resilient crops. I hypothesise that roots employ novel volatile signals to sense medium levels of soil compaction, and mechanical signalling pathways to sense very high level of soil compaction. The premise of this novel signalling paradigm is based on the size of volatile signalling molecules and soil pores that impact the ability of gaseous signals to diffuse through compacted soil. However, when soil pore size is too small to allow gaseous exchange for even small signals like ethylene, mechanical signalling will take over to control root responses in very highly compacted soil. The GROUNDBREAKING project will pioneer the characterisation of novel volatile and mechanical signalling pathways I have recently identified control root compaction responses, revealing their underlying molecular, cellular and tissue-scale mechanisms, then creating a new paradigm for root-soil signalling. To realise these ambitious goals, I will integrate interdisciplinary expertise in soil physics, state-of-the-art non-invasive imaging, cutting edge molecular biology and genetic approaches under natural soil conditions. The GROUNDBREAKING project is also very timely as the new knowledge generated about compaction responses will underpin efforts to engineer crop roots to grow deeper and access more reliable water resources.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

Catalysis, the acceleration of chemical reactions using a catalyst, is used in the production of almost every manufactured product we interact with. Catalysts used industrially allow chemical reactions to happen using less energy and producing less waste, and the catalyst can be retrieved and reused almost endlessly. Understanding and improving catalyst materials are clearly, therefore, vital for current and future green economies. Catalysts can be grouped in to two distinct categories, homogenous catalysts and heterogenous catalysis. A homogenous catalyst shares the same physical state (solid, liquid or gas) as the reactants while heterogeneous catalysts exist in a different physical state to reactants. For example, a homogeneous catalyst could be dissolved in a solvent and help to join together small molecules in the same solvent, while a heterogenous catalyst could be a solid block of metal used to help gas phase molecules react. Homogenous catalysts commonly feature metal atoms as part of larger molecules and overall molecular shape and size has huge implications for their behaviour as catalysts. These catalysts are highly selective for specific reaction pathways from many that reactant molecules can undergo, and as such reduce waste from the unwanted pathways. Homogenous catalysts can operate with very few expensive metal atoms but can be difficult to separate from the final products. This is problematic both because it is hard to achieve high purity for consumer goods likes pharmaceuticals (the catalyst is considered an impurity) and some valuable catalytic material is lost and cannot be reused for later batches. Heterogenous catalysts use small (over 10000 times smaller than the width of a human hair) clusters of very few metal atoms spread over a relatively inert, cheap support material. These catalysts are less selective, so produce more waste, and require larger quantities of expensive metals for the same amount of product. The huge advantage, compared with homogenous analogues, is that the catalyst is easily recovered and separated from the product for re-use in later batches. In the last 5 years, a new approach used to make heterogenous catalysts more attractive - single atom catalysis (SAC) - has become prominent. In SACs single atoms of the expensive metallic material responsible for the catalytic behaviour are spread out, far apart from each other, on a solid support. This is doubly advantageous: it ensures the most efficient utilisation of metals (every single metal atom is a possible catalysis site) and introduces high selectivity (usually associated with homogenous catalysts). Our proposition is that SACs could be tuned similarly to how homogenous catalysts currently are, by attaching small molecular entities directly to the metal atom to control its behaviour. We propose that by attaching different molecules to the metal atoms in carefully chosen SACs their behaviour can be altered, and the reaction pathways that the catalyst selects can be chosen. We will employ ultra-clean vacuum environments and cutting edge techniques housed within them (X-ray standing waves (XSW), photoelectron diffraction (PhD), scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM), temperature programmed desorption (TPD)), supplemented with techniques operating closer to reactor / ambient environments (ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, ambient pressure XSW, ambient pressure PhD). By combining these techniques, we can follow how the chemical reaction (catalysed by the SAC) happens with spatial precision smaller than the distances between atoms in a conventional catalyst. The fundamental insight we produce will reveal how to tailor the reactivity of SACs, an entirely new method for designing catalysts from their smallest building blocks. By studying these kinds catalysts at this level of detail, we will provide insight into the fundamental chemistry that underpins all heterogenous catalysis.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

Advanced economies are confronted with serious challenges that require us to approach problem solving in a completely different way. As the climate emergency deepens and our global population continues to rise, we must all consider several quite taxing philosophical questions, most pressingly we must address our addiction to economic growth, our expectation for longer, healthier lives and our insatiable need to collect more stuff! Societies demand for performance molecules, ranging from pharmaceuticals to fragrances or adhesives to lubricants, is growing year-on-year and the advent of competition in a globalised marketplace is generally forcing the market price downward, cutting margins and reducing the ability for some industry sectors to innovate. Feedstock to Function (F2F) is an exciting opportunity to forge a new philosophy that could underpin the next phase of sustainable growth for the chemicals manufacturing industry in the UK and further afield. An overarching driving force in the development of F2F was the desire to apply the knowledge and learning of Green and Sustainable Chemistry onto some of the biggest challenges that confront chemicals manufacture, from the smallest-scale, to the delivery of efficient and resilient processes that will future proof supply chains for the foreseeable future. Our CDT in resilient chemistry will deliver a sustainable pipeline of performance molecules, by moving towards circularity and resilience in feedstocks, and efficiency in processing and reaction chemistries . F2F will create an Integrated Approach to Sustainable Chemistry, promoting a culture of resilience in terms of materials and matter via industrially defined priorities: I. Sustainable routes to nitrogen containing molecules, avoiding Haber-Bosch fixed precursors: II. Non-petroleum routes to hydrocarbon feedstocks, particularly synthetic naphtha (C8-C30) III. Circular chemistries to manage the impact of phosphorus and other key inorganic materials; and IV. Enhanced circularity for technical materials including metals, catalysts, solvents and salts. F2F represents a multidisciplinary group of 45 academic advisors spanning 7 academic disciplines and two Universities, working together with a growing family of industrial partners who have expressed a common desire to develop Smarter products using Better chemistry to enable Faster processing and Shorter manufacturing routes. F2F will innovate by: 1 fostering a multidisciplinary, cohort-based approach to problem solving; 2 focus on challenge areas identified by our F2F partners such that sub-groups of our cohort can become immersed in research that impacts on industry; 3 embedding aspects of data-driven decision making in the day-to-day design and execution of high-quality research either on paper or indeed in the lab; 4 nurturing a vibrant and supportive community that allows PhD candidates to think 'outside of the box' in a relatively risk-free way; 5 developing 'next generation' synthesis using chemo- and bio-catalytic methods to drive efficiency, selectivity and productivity, underpinned by predictive in-silico methods and valorisation of big data; 6 streamlining the discovery process by enabling technologies: such as energy resilient photo/electrochemical methods, cleaner solvents and renewable materials 7 developing sustainable processes that deliver efficiency and transition to scale-up from g to Kg, applying state-of-the-art manufacturing including 3-D printing, fermentation, multiphase flow, in-line diagnostics to underpin rapid translation into industry; 8 applying robust reaction/process evaluation metrics such that comparative advantages can be quantified, providing evidence for real process decision making. F2F will train PhD graduates with the vision and skills to drive decarbonisation in the UK Chemicals using industries, securing innovation and future growth for this critical manufacturing sector.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-06

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the greatest global challenges we face this century. Recent estimates suggest almost 5 million deaths were linked to AMR infections worldwide in 2019. Antimicrobials are used as "growth promoters" in livestock throughout the world, although this is banned in the UK. Using antimicrobials routinely like this allows bacteria which carry antimicrobial resistance genes (ARG) to survive and grow in the guts of livestock. These ARG can transfer between bacteria and may spread to disease-causing pathogens, making these diseases increasingly difficult to treat. These pathogens can transfer to humans through direct contact, or consumption of contaminated food. This is a problem, even in the UK which banned antibiotic growth promoters, as AMR pathogens can spread between countries by international travel, trade, and migratory wildlife. Much is unknown about how ARG spread between animals, humans, and the environment and this needs to be understood before we can design effective interventions. Combatting AMR requires a global approach to reduce overall antimicrobial use in animals and humans and the pursuit of alternative treatments. In this project, researchers from the UK and India will study the spread of AMR in dairy farms in the UK and Central India. Our focus is the bacterium E. coli which causes a range of infections in animals and humans. E. coli is a critical priority for control by the World Health Organization (WHO) because it causes infections that are increasingly multi-drug resistant, and it can survive in the environment for extended periods. We will track the spread of ARG and E. coli in the environments of five dairy farms in India, and two in the UK, over two year period. We are focussing on dairy cattle because they are susceptible to diarrhoea caused by E. coli, particularly when young; and are frequently treated with antimicrobials to control other infections such as mastitis. India is also the largest producer of milk in the world, much of which is consumed raw within the country; so there is a high risk of foodborne infection in humans. We will take samples of faeces from livestock every two months and farm workers every four months, as well as environmental samples such as rodent and bird faeces, milk samples and swabs from equipment and machinery. These samples will be cultured to detect E. coli, and these bacteria will then be screened to determine their resistance to a panel of antibiotics. We will also use DNA sequencing of all cattle and human faecal samples to determine ARG carried by other microbes. Data on antibiotic use and practices will be gathered for each farm using questionnaires and interviews. This will help us to determine whether changes that we see in E. coli or AMR patterns over time can be linked with antimicrobial use or farm management. Lastly, we will develop an alternative to antibiotic treatment of livestock, using viruses called bacteriophage or 'phage'. These phage only infect a specific subset of bacteria, e.g. coliphages which infect E. coli. We have an existing collection of coliphages, and a panel of pathogenic E. coli strains isolated from livestock in the UK, EU and elsewhere over the past 30 years. We will isolate new coliphages from faecal and wastewater samples in the UK and India and screen these against our panel of E. coli strains, plus any more that we isolate from our two-year dairy farm study. This will be done using high-throughput equipment capable of processing up to 5,000 combinations of phage and bacteria at once. The data from these experiments will be used to develop mathematical models or "machine learning algorithms" that can analyse patterns in data to select the best phage candidates to use to control the pathogenic E. coli in livestock. At the end of the project, we will work with industrial partners to further develop this new treatment into a viable therapeutic alternative to antibiotics.