Professor Hal Drakesmith leads a group at the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, which researches how iron and anaemia influence immunity and infectious diseases. In this project, he will work with Jon Wade, Associate Professor of Planetary Materials in the Department of Earth Sciences.
Their work under this award will bridge Earth and Medical Sciences to address how differences in metal use at the cellular level affect health and ecology at scale. To explore the therapeutic and environmental impacts, they will measure metal levels in a variety of single cells from bacteria, algae, and human white blood cells and cancer cells, and track how iron moves through them.
This grant award builds on several years of work growing a cross-disciplinary research approach in close collaboration with Earth Sciences. It has been very rewarding - and challenging - to understand each other's scientific jargon and methodologies, but now we are making good progress and UKRI have recognised the potential of what we are doing. I'm very much looking forward to developing our metallomics further and getting to know better what iron actually does in our cells. - Hal Drakesmith, Professor of Iron Biology
Metal ions are critical for hundreds of biological processes, influencing everything from human health to global ecosystems. For example, iron deficiency impacts the wellbeing of 2 billion humans and limits phytoplankton growth influencing climate dynamics. However, scientists lack a clear picture of how metal levels vary between individual cells, and how these differences affect cell behaviour, disease, and environmental processes. This cross-disciplinary project aims to tackle that challenge, focusing on how variation in cellular metal content influences function across diverse biological systems.
Building on recent advances, the team has developed methods to measure metal content in thousands of individual cells per minute by combining single-cell mass spectrometry with advanced cell-sorting technologies. Early studies in human and mouse immune cells have already revealed unexpected variation in iron levels between cell types, with even small changes linked to significant shifts in metabolism.
The next phase will expand this work by integrating new facilities and collaborative workflows across disciplines, enabling researchers to track how metals move within cells, assess clinical interventions such as iron therapies, and explore environmental applications – from understanding how ocean changes affect phytoplankton to identifying microbes that can help detoxify polluted ecosystems. Together, these efforts aim to uncover how metals influence life at single-cell resolution, opening new avenues for both biomedical and environmental research.
I’m very excited to continue our partnership where our cutting-edge analytical techniques developed in Earth Sciences are applied to significant issues in global health. As Hal points out, although science may have a common language, disciplines often speak different dialects - after five years of collaboration, I think we finally understand each other! It's this cross-fertilisation of ideas and bringing new techniques and ways of thinking about a problem which delivers advances, and I’m hugely grateful to be part of this award
- Jon Wade, Associate Professor of Planetary Materials
Check out their recent video to learn more about Hal and Jon’s work: