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Listed below are the winners of the 2007 Daiwa Adrian Prizes.

£15,000 Prizes
 

High energy density science: new frontiers in plasma physics

Professor Ryosuke Kodama and Professor Peter Norreys collect their Daiwa Adrian Prize from Lady Adrian alongside Mr Nicholas Clegg, Lord Rees, and members of the research team.

Institutions: STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Imperial College London, University of Oxford,
University of York, Queen’s University Belfast, and Osaka University

UK Team Leader: Professor Peter Norreys, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Japan Team Leader : Professor Ryosuke Kodama

Professor Norreys and Professor Kodama were junior members of a team that won a Daiwa Award (the precursor of the Daiwa Adrian Prize) in 1994.

Professor Peter Norreys collected the Prize:

"High energy density science is based on recent developments in laser technology that have allowed unprecedented powers to be reached in the laboratory. Laser pulses of up to one petawatt (10¹⁵ Watts) - which is equivalent to a hundred times the entire world's electricity production - can be focused to a spot smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Fortunately it only lasts for one billionth of a second, but during that time, electric fields of billions of volts per centimetre, temperatures of tens of millions of degrees centigrade, and pressures in the 1000-million atmospheres range are generated. These are equivalent conditions to those found in the interior of stars, in supernova explosions and other astrophysical phenomena. How matter behaves under these extreme conditions - laboratory astrophysics, thermodynamic properties of matter, fast electron generation and transport - are the subject of this Daiwa Adrian Prize.

"The Prize is also recognition of recent Japan - UK collaborations in fast ignition inertial fusion ideas that the team have developed that have revolutionised the field of fusion energy. The main conventional approach to fusion energy, based upon magnetic confinement of hydrogen isotopes, can be thought of as similar to a furnace - fuel is constantly fed into a plasma confined by strong magnetic fields and burnt on a continuous basis. The other approach, based upon inertial confinement, involves the compression of matter to very high density with a spark that explodes the confined fuel - similar to the internal combustion engine. Our idea uses petawatt laser pulses to deliver the spark, thus significantly reducing the driver energy requirement and bringing the commercial realisation of fusion power that much closer."

 

Understanding predatory Bdellovibrio bacteria as living antibiotics and the roles of surface ultra structures on the bacterial surface in prey penetration and killing and in motility


Professor Liz Sockett and Professor Shin-Ichi Aizawa collect their Daiwa Adrian Prize from Lady Adrian alongside Mr Nicholas Clegg and members of the research team.

Institutions: University of Nottingham, Prefectural University of Hiroshima

UK Team Leader: Professor Liz Sockett, University of Nottingham
Japan Team Leader: Professor Shin-Ichi Aizawa, Prefectural University of Hiroshima and CREST Soft-Nanomachine Project

In collecting the Prize, Professor Shin-Ichi Aizawa said:

"I am very honoured to be here today to receive our prize from Lady Adrian and to meet honoured guests. My long-time friend and collaborator Liz Sockett will describe our work but I would like to contribute a haiku which I have composed in honour of the occasion:

"ポインセチア　科学する眼の　光けり"
 

Professor Liz Sockett said:

"Chi Aizawa and I have collaborated for eight years. We began by studying flagella - the tiny propellers of swimming bacteria; and we have recently engineered them into useful nano-tubes for industry. Five years ago we began to study the fantastic, friendly-bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus, which, as its name suggests eats other bacteria. They are “living antibiotics” which naturally invade and kill disease-causing bacteria, but which do not harm humans. With generous support from the Wellcome Trust and the Human Frontier Science Programme, we have combined Chi’s microscopy skills with our genetics to understand how Bdellovibrio attack their prey and to begin to harness them as new treatments for antibiotic resistant infections.

"My lab all have great respect and affection for Chi, and I am delighted that they are here today to share their award with him. He is a wise and experienced sensei who teaches research students well.

"Our labs have enjoyed learning about each others’ customs, languages, food and drink, while researching together! I have enjoyed working with his students; they treat the English lady-professor with great kindness and interest!

"Chi, as you now realise, is a haiku-ist and indeed working with his group often feels like poetry in motion! I think that it speaks volumes for Anglo-Japanese relations, that the lab of a wise sensei from Hiroshima can make such scientific discoveries, and have such fun, working with the lab of an Englishwoman from Nottingham."

Analysis of the Mechanism and Structural Dynamics of the Bacterial Flagellar Motor

Dr Richard Berry collects his Daiwa Adrian Prize from Lady Adrian and Mr Nicholas Clegg with members of the research team.

Institutions: University of Oxford, Nagoya University, and Tohoku University.

UK Team Leader: Dr Richard Berry, University of Oxford
Japan Team Leader: Professor Michio Homma, Nagoya University

Dr Richard Berry collected the Prize:

"We would like to thank The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation for recognizing our work with the award of a Daiwa Adrian Prize. Professor Homma regrets that he is unable to attend, and sends his apologies. Our work is at the boundary between physics, biology and nanotechnology. The flagellar motor is a rotary electric motor 50 nm in diameter which self assembles in the bacterial envelope and propels swimming bacteria via a helical propeller called the filament. Using a range of genetic and biophysical techniques we have studied the basic mechanism of the motor and the way that it is maintained in a living cell. To learn about the mechanism, we attach particles 200-500 nm in diameter to the motor and track their position with a resolution of ~5 nm and ~0.4 ms using high-speed microscopy. This work is done in the UK lab, in the physics department in Oxford. To make a motor that will go slow enough for the fundamental stepping rotation of the motor to be seen, we genetically engineered the E. coli motor to run on sodium rather than hydrogen ions, allowing us to slow the motor by removing most of the sodium. The genetics and molecular biology were done in the Japanese lab in Nagoya. We are also working with motors that have had various components labelled with fluorescent proteins, allowing us to count how many copies of each protein are in the motor and whether they stay there or are constantly exchanged.

"The work could not have been done without the Anglo-Japanese collaboration. The areas of expertise in the Homma and Berry labs are very different, and both absolutely essential for this type of inter-disciplinary research. There are many people who have made a significant contribution to this collaboration, but I would like to single out one for special thanks. Yoshiyuki Sowa began the project by making the genetically engineered motors in Nagoya, and saw it through by performing the Biophysical experiments along with a UK student (Alex Rowe) on two visits to Oxford in 2003 and 2004. Since then he has remained at the heart of the collaboration, most recently as a visiting fellow in Oxford. I hope that he will continue to cement the links between Japan and the UK in this particular field after he returns to set up his own lab in Japan, and I would like to end by thanking the Daiwa Foundation once more for their part in ensuring that this will happen."

 

£10,000 Prizes

Understanding the function of intestinal intraepithelial T lymphocytes during challenge with the coccidial pathogen Eimeria species

Dr Kyoko Inagaki-Ohara and Dr Adrian Smith collects their Daiwa Adrian Prize from Lady Adrian and Mr Nicholas Clegg.

Institutions: Institute for Animal Health, University of Miyazaki, and University of the Ryukyus

UK Team Leader: Dr Adrian Smith, Institute for Animal Health
Japan Team Leader: Dr Kyoko Inagaki-Ohara, University of Miyazaki

Dr Adrian Smith collected the Prize:

"On behalf of Kyoko, Goro [Matsuzaki, University of the Ryukyus], the members of our teams and myself, I would like to express our sincere thanks for The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in making this award in recognition for the collaborative work of our laboratories. Receiving the Daiwa Adrian Prize is a great honour and we will use this support to facilitate exchanges between our laboratories and to extend our collaborative programme.

"Our efforts to understand the biology of a group of T cells known as intra-epithelial lymphocytes (IEL’s) has relevance to combating enteric infection and understanding the aetiology of enteric pathologies. The IEL are diverse group of cells that are important in maintenance of enteric integrity, regulating mucosal responses and combating enteric infections. The IEL are numerically one of the most abundant groups of lymphocytes in the body and despite the clear importance of these cells they remain a relatively understudied group of T cells. We focus on defining the role of different IEL subsets in the context of infection and inflammation, in particular the way that these cells communicate with the epithelial cells lining the gut.

"Our work on common themes brought us together but also gave us the opportunity to develop the friendships that are so important to each of us. These links provide a strong foundation for the future and we hope to extend our group to include others in Japan and the UK that share our desire for knowledge and appreciation of each others culture and customs. The Daiwa Adrian Prize will contribute to our future together."
 

The Importance of Epigenetics in Cartilage Development and Disease


Dr Trudy Roach collects her Daiwa Adrian Prize from Lady Adrian and Mr Nicholas Clegg alongside research team member, Mr Ko Hashimoto.

Institutions: University of Southampton and Tohoku University

UK Team Leader: Dr Trudy Roach, University of Southampton
Japan Team Leader: Professor Shoichi Kokubun, Tohoku University
 

Dr Trudy Roach collected the Prize:

"By the time we get to 70, more than 60% of us will suffer from osteoarthritis to some extent. Progressive erosion of the protective cartilage layer causes pain and loss of mobility. It is a frustrating disease for both the patient and doctor, since we don’t know the cause, there is no treatment and no cure (except joint replacements). By studying the cartilage from arthritic patients under the microscope, Dr. Roach noticed that the cartilage cells were producing those proteases that degraded the cartilage, whereas normal cartilage cells did not. What were the reasons for this abnormal gene expression?

"Every cell in the body has the genetic code for every gene the body can make, but activates only those genes that are typical for the particular cell. All other genes are silenced by so-called epigenetic mechanisms, which involves putting ‘locks’ on the not-required regions of DNA. To explain the abnormal activation of proteases in arthritis, Dr Roach proposed that ‘lock removal’ had taken place. With the help of Dr Yamada from Professor Kokubun’s group in Sendai, the hypothesis was verified: indeed, the locks had been removed in arthritis, which, in turn, caused the abnormal activation of these proteases, leading to cartilage erosion. Perhaps, if we could prevent the lock removal, we might prevent, or at least slow down, the progression of arthritis. This requires understanding the molecular mechanisms, which requires an experimental model of the process. Thanks to the hard work of Dr Hashimoto, we now have such a model and with the help of a future Fellow from Sendai and the Daiwa Adrian Prize to pay for research consumables, we are in an excellent position to progress towards our aim of finding some treatment for osteoarthritis. All members of the team are very honoured and grateful to receive the prestigious Daiwa Adrian Prize."