The UK Midlands BAG consists of groups located at the Universities of Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham, and Keele. We represent a diverse spectrum of research interests, from microbiology, cancer biology, blood disorders, immunology to fundamental biological processes such as membrane transport, DNA repair and mechanisms of enzyme catalysis. Our groups use X-ray crystallography and cryoEM in conjunction with biophysical and biochemical techniques to elucidate molecular mechanisms of protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions. Our cooperation in this block allocation group is mirrored by the consortium of institutions that are stakeholders in the Midlands Regional CryoEM Facility at the University of Leicester.

Iron-chromium (FeCr) alloys are a top candidate for development as structural materials within Demonstrator fusion reactors. Examples of already developed materials are Eurofer97 (E97), F82H, Fe-14Cr-YWTi oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) alloys. In the latter, the addition of Y2O3 nanoparticles into these alloys improve their tensile and creep properties and show higher temperature resistance. Within a nuclear fusion reactor, first wall and tritium breeding blanket structural materials will undergo microstructural changes such as the formation of precipitates, voids, bubbles, and dislocation loops, caused by high energy neutrons produced during the deuterium-tritium fusion reaction. These microstructural changes produce changes in the lattice structure, generating localised strains within the lattice. Here we propose to use synchrotron 3D Bragg ptychography, to visualise these lattice strains and distributions of strains within neutron irradiated Fe-Cr based steels.

Accurate quantification of local packing density and mixing in simulations of particulate systems is essential for many industrial applications. Traditional methods which simply count the number of particle centres within a given volume of space (cell) introduce discontinuities at cell boundaries, leading to unreliable measurements of packing density. We introduce Packing3D.jl, an open-source Julia package providing analytic partial-volume calculations for spheres intersecting Cartesian and cylindrical meshes. We derive closed-form solutions for single, double and triple spherical-cap intersections, plus sphere-cylinder overlaps. We implement efficient mesh-generation routines, principal-cell indexing, and data-splitting functions for time-series analyses. Performance and accuracy were validated against simple cubic and face-centred cubic lattices and via boundary-shift continuity tests. Packing3D.jl converges exactly to theoretical lattice densities, eliminates discontinuities at sub-particle resolution, and scales linearly with particle count. Memory usage remains modest (40 B per particle, 48 B per cell). Packing3D.jl provides researchers with continuous, reproducible volume-fraction fields and robust mixing indices at high performance, facilitating sensitivity analyses and optimisation in granular process engineering.

Accurate quantification of local packing density and mixing in simulations of particulate systems is essential for many industrial applications. Traditional methods which simply count the number of particle centres within a given volume of space (cell) introduce discontinuities at cell boundaries, leading to unreliable measurements of packing density. We introduce Packing3D.jl, an open-source Julia package providing analytic partial-volume calculations for spheres intersecting Cartesian and cylindrical meshes. We derive closed-form solutions for single, double and triple spherical-cap intersections, plus sphere-cylinder overlaps. We implement efficient mesh-generation routines, principal-cell indexing, and data-splitting functions for time-series analyses. Performance and accuracy were validated against simple cubic and face-centred cubic lattices and via boundary-shift continuity tests. Packing3D.jl converges exactly to theoretical lattice densities, eliminates discontinuities at sub-particle resolution, and scales linearly with particle count. Memory usage remains modest (40 B per particle, 48 B per cell). Packing3D.jl provides researchers with continuous, reproducible volume-fraction fields and robust mixing indices at high performance, facilitating sensitivity analyses and optimisation in granular process engineering.

Most parasites are able to infect several host species, yet generalism is anticipated to be a costly strategy. Parasite abundance provides an important indicator of fitness because it is promoted by longevity and fecundity, which are correlated with a parasite’s basic reproductive number. Using a global database of parasitic helminths of terrestrial mammals, we show that the abundance of parasitic helminths is phylogenetically structured across helminth species. High parasite abundance can be achieved through three separate components: infecting abundant host species, having a high infection success (prevalence), or achieving high parasite abundance within host individuals (infection intensity). Both phylogenetically specialist and generalist strategies can reach high abundances, but through different strategies. Specialist parasites achieve higher abundance than generalists on their principal host species but rely on host relatedness to infect multiple species. For generalist parasites, geographic overlap with, and diet similarity to principal host species are better predictors of parasite abundance. This study characterizes constraints on parasite host range and provides novel context to evaluate the potential for parasites to establish in new host species.

Nests are the locations or containers for offspring, and mediate interactions between offspring and the environment. However, understanding how environmental factors shape the evolution of nest architecture is complicated. In particular, the relative contributions of biotic (e.g., protection from predation) and abiotic (e.g., microclimate maintenance) factors to the evolution of nest architecture have not been clearly quantified, and multiple nest traits, such as their location or shape, are rarely considered together. Here, we use a dataset of 3,685 bird species with complete data across five different nest traits (out of a wider dataset of 10,528 species included in the repository), to characterise a multivariate ‘morphospace’ of nest architecture. We achieve this using ordination methods, namely a principal coordinate analysis. Then, we use all derived axes of variation in nest morphospace and multivariate phylogenetic comparative methods used for geometric data to explore whether abiotic or biotic factors better explain the variation observed in ordination-derived nest architecture. We detect that abiotic environmental factors (climate) explain more variation than biotic factors. However, substantial variation in nest architecture remains unexplained after accounting for the variables used here, suggesting that commonly used nest traits may not capture covariation between nest architecture and the environment as expected. Nonetheless, our study demonstrates how nest evolution is affected by the environment on a global scale, which will form a foundation to explore a more diverse array of nest traits and environmental variables, to understand nest evolution in the world’s birds.

A distinct shoulder region, defined by endoskeletal and dermal girdles and associated pectoral musculature, is a major evolutionary adaptation of jawed vertebrates. In teleost model species the large (macromeric) pectoral dermal bones can be derived from multiple embryonic tissues, identifying the shoulder of osteichthyans as a developmentally complex area at the head-trunk boundary. The absence of bone in living chondrichthyans makes Palaeozoic stem groups capable of dermal ossification key to understanding the underpinnings of skeletal growth in the shoulder of crown gnathostomes (osteichthyans and chondrichthyans). Here, using synchrotron X-ray tomography we demonstrate that individual pectoral plates in the oldest unequivocal jawed vertebrate, the Silurian (c. 439 Mya) chondrichthyan Fanjingshania renovata, develop from five separate growth centres. These centres correspond to pectoral bony spines that fuse neighbouring dermal scales into a pinnal plate and their expansion is accompanied by cyclical resorption and remodelling of bone and dentine. Our phylogenetic analyses support an interpretation of these processes as crown and stem gnathostome characters that co-occur only in the shoulder girdle of stem chondrichthyans. The systematic hard tissue remodelling in Fanjingshania reveals an unexpected growth dynamic within chondrichthyans that relates to the formation of a macromeric skeleton through integration of modular elements.

The evolution of jaws is hypothesized to have fueled radiations among vertebrates, contributing to their overwhelming success in the present day. Past work shows rapid early expansion of diversity in jaw structure in many lineages; however, the evolutionary dynamics underlying this pattern are unclear and hindered by the lack of a robust comparative framework. Here, using a macroevolutionary approach, we explore the diversification of lower jaws in early bony fishes,  a major contributor to this initial radiation. Using newly generated three-dimensional mandibular shape data from 86 species, we find evidence of adaptive radiation in jaws during the earliest interval of bony fish evolutionary history (423-359 Ma.). These patterns are principally driven by early lungfishes and coelacanths, which display high rates of jaw diversification, rapid shifts into novel functional regions of trait space, as well as substantial innovation in jaw morphology and feeding ecology, standing in contrast to their "living fossil" descendants of today. Conversely, ray-finned fishes and tetrapodomorphs, morphologically diverse groups in the present day, show little indication of their future success, possessing slow rates of jaw evolution and low functional diversity. This profound inversion of patterns in modern taxa highlights the significance of paleontological data in understanding drivers of evolutionary diversification and the limitations of approaches using only living species. Overall, our findings provide insight into the evolutionary dynamics associated with the evolution of jaws and provides context for the role of jaws in vertebrate success.

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