Welcome to our page! This website provides information and research updates relating to Agnes Noy’s research group and their publications. Our interests focus on DNA topology and protein-DNA interactions using modelling techniques.
We are always keen in hearing from talented and motivated scientists interested in our research, please get in touch!
News
March 2024: I presented our work in the TORC seminar series about DNA topology, which are organized by Sarah Harris. I had the best audience!
September 2023: I was very happy to present our work at the Lorentz Workshop “Biology and physics of the prokaryotic chromosome”. I also learnt so much!! https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/biology-and-physics-of-the-prokaryotic-chromosome.html
September 2023: Katy Holland presented a poster at the EMBO workshop: “DNA topology and topoisomerases in genome dynamics”. I promise to be in the next one!
September 2023: And congratulations to Elliot Chan and Matt Burman to pass their vivas!
June 2023: Elliot Chan and Matt Burman have submitted their thesis this same week! They have already set up their next positions: Elliot in Marc Van der Kamp’s lab (Bristol) and Matt at the spinout company OpenBioSim originated by Julien Michel (Edinburgh). Best luck!
June 2023: Our PhD student Katy Hollands together with other members of the Physics of Life community here at York have organized an activity at the York Festival of Ideas showing how DNA bends and coils in real life
May 2023: Agnes Noy presented lab’s work at the “DNA supercoiling: statistical physics, theoretical models and experiments” meeting in Sardinia (https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/workshops/dna-supercoiling-statistical-physics-theoretical-models-and-experiments/). Many thanks to the organizers (Davide Marenduzzo, Giuseppe Gonnella and Enzo Orlandini) for having me.
March 2023: Elliot Chan and Matt Burman presented their work in the Physics of Life conference held in Harrogate. We felt really honored and grateful that two of our abstract were selected for talks among all the amazing work done by the biophysics community.
December 2022: We went out with the Physics of Life people from York and we took a chance to get some pics of the group
July 2022: We are thrilled to announce that, this September, we will be welcoming 2 new PhD students in the group: Katy Hollands, who will be studying topoisomerases in collaboration with Tony Maxwell (JIC, Norwich, UK), and Neha Ramteke, who will focus on DNA elasticity.
June 2022: Our paper describing the protocol to model DNA adopting complex topological structures at atomic level is out at Methods of Molecular Biology: https://link.springer.com/protocol/10.1007/978-1-0716-2221-6_8. Great work from George Watson and Victor Velasco.
February 2022: Our collaboration with Emil Kristoffersen (Aarhus University) and Phil Holliger (MRC, Cambridge) is out at eLIFE. Matthew Burman made a great contribution as well. We show that RNA alone can catalyze all the steps of a viroid-like replication cycle. Simulations indicated RNA synthesis on the circle causes tension and, thus, melting at the ends. See an image from simulations and the tweet from the journal: https://twitter.com/eLife/status/1518324948653293569
December 2021: Congratulations to Nettie Alevropoulus-Borrill for defending successfully her viva! Excellent work in collaboration with the structural biologists Fred Antson, Vladimir Levdikov (YSBL, York) and Cyril Sanders (Sheffield). She is the second doctor (first female) forged in the group!
September 2021: Our paper describing the multiplicity of DNA binding modes induced by the integration host factor is out at Nucleic Acids Research! Amazing head-to-head work by the two first authors Sam Yoshua and George Watson combining AFM and simulations and in collaboration with Mark Leake: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkab641
September 2021: Reflecting on our research at the York Physics of Life Away Day, our first ‘in person’ since 2019! In a such gorgeous day! Yes, there are some sunny days in Yorkshire, not many, but some.
April 2021: Congratulations to George Watson for defending successfully his viva. He is the first doctor forged in the group!
February 2021: Our paper describing supercoiled DNA minicircles by atomic force microscopy and simulations is out at Nature Communications! Victor Velasco Berrelleza from the group developed SerraLINE code for comparing modelled structures with microscopy images. Work in collaboration with Alice Pyne (Sheffield) and Sarah Harris (Leeds) among others.
Look at the press release https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2021/research/dna-dancing-video/ and some videos
It has been covered by national media like Daily Express https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1398473/dancing-dna-highest-resolution-pictures-dna-molecules-video-evg and Daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9265951/Scientists-capture-highest-resolution-images-single-MOLECULE-DNA.html
It also has been covered by specialist journals and blogs like Phys.org https://phys.org/news/2021-02-visualization-dna.html, Science Bulletin https://sciencebulletin.org/first-videos-to-show-the-helix-of-dancing-dna-developed-by-scientists/ and IFLScience with more than 3700 shares! https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/highestresolution-images-of-dna-ever-reveal-how-it-dances/
October 2020: Agnes Noy gave a talk at the launch of the 3rd Physics of Life Network funded by the research councils. Huge involvement from the York Physics of Life group, with Tom McLeish as a chair and Mark Leake as a speaker, also celebrating the opening of a new building dedicated to the research at the biological physics interface.
October 2020: George Watson gave a virtual talk at the internal seminar series organized by the YBRI at York. Great discussion with biologists at the University of York
September 2020: Our program SerraNA is published at Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. in collaboration with Ramin Golestanian (Max Planck, Gottingen) and Mark Leake. Great job of Victor Velasco-Berrelleza!
July 2020: Our paper in collaboration with Tung Le (John Innes Center, Norwich, UK) is out at Cell Reports. Great job of Elliot Chan in running complementary simulations of the crystallographic structures.
December 2019: The Physics of Life Christmas dinner! As Mark Leake tweet, a truly awesome collective!
And we took the chance of making another group pic because we didn’t have any with Matt, although we missed Nettie, the other girl in the clan. Well, we have an excuse for making one on the next event!
December 2019: Our lab and the rest of the Physics of Life group is moving to a new building! From now on, you will find us in Genesis 3 at the York Science Park next to the University of York.
September 2019: George, Nettie, and Victor attended the 7th annual CCPBioSim Conference in Bristol.
July 2019: We welcome Matthew Burman to the lab to do his PhD with us!
June 2019: We all attended the 6th Molecular Microbiology meeting. We presented posters and gave a talk. The conference was also the 1st day of Elliot Chan in our lab! He will do his MSc with us.
June 2019: Biophysics away day. Researchers, postgraduates and academics from the Physics of Life group at the University of York Physics of Life researchers, postgraduates and academics tackling the greatest questions of the field.
June 19: We were DNA Detectives at the York Festival of Ideas
May 2019: Agnes gave a talk and engaged with the audience during the Pint of Science event at the Pivni pub at York. Here, you can see a genome being symbolize as a ball of wool.
November 2018: Members of our group together with other postgrads from the Physics of Life group in their stand at the YorNight annual event. You could see DNA and other biomolecules using Virtual Reality!
Agnes Noy 