Aston University biochemist explains why oxygen is an essential but stressful element - public lecture

• Professor Corinne Spickett will explain how oxygen can cause damage to cells and lead to diseases
• Her inaugural lecture will take place on Thursday 26 January 2023 at 6.30 pm
• Members of the public may attend in person or online.

A leading biochemist at Aston University is to give an inaugural lecture on the concept of oxidative stress and how failure to control it leads to diseases on Thursday 26 January 2023.

During her public lecture, ‘Oxygen: can’t live without it, but stressful to live with it’, Professor Corinne Spickett will explain how oxygen can cause damage to cells, how damaged molecules such as “sticky lipids” can be measured using advanced technology, and what their biological effects are.

Corinne moved to Aston University in 2011 from the University of Strathclyde. Her first degree was in biochemistry at Oxford University and she went on to gain a DPhil from Oxford on the application of NMR to study yeast bioenergetics in vivo.

After postdoctoral work using NMR to investigate stress responses in plants and glutathione metabolism in pre-eclamptic toxaemia, she became a Glaxo-Jack research lecturer in the Department of Immunology at the University of Strathclyde and subsequently a senior lecturer in the Department of Biosciences.

Since then, she has been working on the analysis of phospholipid oxidation by mass spectrometry and the biological effects of oxidized lipids, especially as relating to atherosclerosis and inflammation, and has published extensively in this field. She has also applied her expertise in analysis of phospholipids to lipidomic studies of LDL in chronic kidney disease and the study of changes in yeast membranes in biotechnology applications.

More recently, she expanded her research to include analysis of protein oxidation and formation of lipoxidation products during inflammation. She is an internationally recognized researcher in the field of redox biology with extensive involvement in international research.

Professor Spickett said: “We tend to take oxygen for granted as something essential for life, but actually it is highly reactive and its role in biochemistry poses a challenge for organisms from yeast to man.

“Through a synopsis of my career, I will explain how oxygen can cause damage to cells and, in parallel, I will illustrate how academic research careers are often non-linear and often depend on serendipity.”

The lecture will take place at Aston University at 6.00 pm for 6.30 pm on Thursday 26 January 2023. It will be followed by a wine reception from 7.30 pm to 8.00 pm. It is open to the public and free to attend, but places must be booked in advance via Eventbrite.