Gavin McStay (He/Him)

Senior Lecturer, Liverpool John Moores University

About Gavin McStay

My research interests focus on the roles mitochondria play in aspects of eukaryotic life, ranging from their origin, metabolism, biogenesis and role they play in cell death pathways. These are interrogated using biochemical, molecular biology, genetic and cell biology techniques. I incorporate these interests into classes I teach to provide an understanding of practical techniques and also the current literature in the field.

I studied biochemistry at the University of Leeds, with an industrial placement at Astra Charnwood, followed by a PhD at the University of Bristol, supervised by Professor Andrew Halestrap, to characterise the molecular composition of the mitochondrial permeability transition pore, with support from MitoKor. My post-doctoral training on the mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis supervised by Dr Doug Green was at the La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology in San Diego, California and St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. I then was an associate research scientist working in the laboratory of Professor Alexander Tzagoloff at Columbia University in New York to study biogenesis of mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase in budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

I held independent positions as assistant professor at the New York Institute of Technology in New York and Staffordshire University in Stoke-on-Trent where I continued my research and taught subjects related to biochemistry, cell biology, genetics and molecular biology. I am now a senior lecturer in biotechnology at Liverpool John Moores University. 

I am a strong supporter of scientific communications and outreach to disseminate scientific developments and knowledge to a broader audience with the goal of increasing the general support of the scientific process.

I also direct Biomed News, a free biomedical research literature discovery platform that uses machine learning.

Research Interest

Apoptosis Bioenergetics Biotechnology Cancer Cell Signalling Enzymology Evolution Gene Therapy Membranes and Membrane Proteins Metabolism Metabolomics Organelles Protein Engineering Protein Expression Protein Structure/Modifications Regulation of Gene Expression Signal Transduction Synthetic Biology Yeast

FEBS Constituent Society

UK (Biochemical Society)

Other Expertise/Interests

Grant writing Journal publishing Postgraduate training Scientific communication Scientific event organization Scientific policy Undergraduate teaching

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Recent Comments

Sep 04, 2024
Replying to Gavin McStay

Very interesting Rob. I direct Biomed News (hhtps://biomed.news) which is a machine learning based platform to discover new biomedical research literature. It is made of up of Reports curated by an Editor on a particular topic. These are released weekly and almost act as a personal journal for each report editor. This is freely shareable to anyone who wants to subscribe. 

The reports are started when an editor provides the seed paper(s). Terms and phrases are then used for subsequent weekly issues to identify abstracts which contain those terms. This is provided in a ranked list. The editor then select papers relevant to the topic and these are added to the machine learning for the following week. This continues as each issue is released. Everything is available on our website - all previous issues and can be shared freely. 

Aug 30, 2024

Very interesting Rob. I direct Biomed News (hhtps://biomed.news) which is a machine learning based platform to discover new biomedical research literature. It is made of up of Reports curated by an Editor on a particular topic. These are released weekly and almost act as a personal journal for each report editor. This is freely shareable to anyone who wants to subscribe. 

Jul 31, 2024

This is really great Christian, thanks for sharing

Comment on Music & Mutation
Jun 11, 2024
Replying to Gavin McStay

This is really cool - what a great collaboration.

Thanks for your reply. I wonder how the sounds change when different genetic codes are used? I often need to consider coding of mitochondrial encoded genes which uses a slightly different code from eukaryotic nuclear code. 

Comment on Music & Mutation
Jun 10, 2024

This is really cool - what a great collaboration.

Sep 12, 2023

Very very informative - thanks for writing

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