Dr Alice Pyne

MSci, MRes, EngD

School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering

Senior Lecturer in Soft Matter & Polymers

UKRI Future Leaders Fellow

Dr Alice Pyne
Profile picture of Dr Alice Pyne
a.l.pyne@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 5969

Full contact details

Dr Alice Pyne
School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering
Sir Robert Hadfield Building
Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD
Profile

I am a Senior Lecturer and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Sheffield. Following my undergraduate degree in Physics at Bristol and my EngD in Biophysics at UCL, I was awarded EPSRC and MRC fellowships to establish my independent research group at UCL. I moved to Sheffield in 2019 as a Lecturer, where I established the Henry Royce Nanocharacterisation Laboratory

My research focusses on developing high-resolution Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) imaging methods for structural characterisation of biomolecules in solution. I have pioneered single-molecule imaging studies of the DNA double helix, including unique time-resolved imaging at the atomic scale, showing DNA molecules twisting and “dancing” in ways that had not previously been imaged. I have a keen interest in bioimage analysis, and have developed an automated image analysis pipeline, TopoStats, that combines AFM image correction, molecule identification, and tracing into a single tool.

Qualifications
  • EngD Biophysics, University College London & the National Physical Laboratory, High Resolution Atomic Force Microscopy of Functional Biological Molecules (2015)
  • MRes (Hons) Distinction, UCL, Molecular Modelling and Materials Science (2011)
  • MSci (Hons) Physics, University of Bristol (2009)
Research interests

My research is highly interdisciplinary, working closely with industry to engineer new high-resolution Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) technologies which enable us to understand the fundamental properties of biological molecules at the nanoscale. These technologies have enabled us to perform unique time-resolved imaging of DNA at the sub-molecular scale. Beyond hardware, I am spearheading the development of an open-source, automated AFM image analysis pipeline, TopoStats, which is becoming the field’s “gold standard”, for which I was awarded the 2023 Royal Microscopy Society’s AFM & SPM award. Our current research impact spans fundamental biological understanding to therapeutic development. 

Key research interests:

  • Atomic Force Microscopy
  • Open-source image analysis pipelines
  • Structure and Function of nucleic acids
  • Materials surface characterisation at the nanoscale
Publications

Journal articles

Chapters

Conference proceedings papers

  • Ravi J, Pfeil MP & Pyne AL (2019) Probing antimicrobial mechanisms for effective strategies to overcome resistance. EUROPEAN BIOPHYSICS JOURNAL WITH BIOPHYSICS LETTERS, Vol. 48 (pp S223-S223) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Pyne ALB, Hoogenboom BW, Vilar R & Maxwell A (2017) Visualisation of DNA conformational changes in situ at nanometre resolution. EUROPEAN BIOPHYSICS JOURNAL WITH BIOPHYSICS LETTERS, Vol. 46 (pp S369-S369) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Yon AR, Pyne ALB, Kwakwa K, Lowe AR, Williams WA & Hoogenboom BW (2017) A combinatorial single-molecule study of ligand-gated ion channels and monoclonal antibodies. EUROPEAN BIOPHYSICS JOURNAL WITH BIOPHYSICS LETTERS, Vol. 46 (pp S371-S371) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Pyne ALB, Pfeil M-P, Bennett I, Ravi J, Lamarre B, Hoogenboom BW & Ryadnov MG (2017) Investigating the mechanism of action of a novel antimicrobial peptide on live E. coli cells. EUROPEAN BIOPHYSICS JOURNAL WITH BIOPHYSICS LETTERS, Vol. 46 (pp S389-S389) RIS download Bibtex download

Software / Code

Datasets

Other

Preprints

Research group

PhD Students:

  • Daniel Rollins (AFM analysis of supercoiled DNA interactions)
  • Mingxue Du (TopoStats: Automating AFM analysis of DNA & protein interactions)
  • Libby Holmes (Complex DNA structures in cancer)
  • Max Gamil (Deep probabilistic models for analysing complex DNA structures)

PhD Students (UCL):

Kavit Main (Single molecule insights into DNA-Topoiomerase interactions) 

Professional activities and memberships
  • Fellow of the Royal Microscopy Society
  • Committee member of the British Biophysical Society
  • Committee member of the Royal Microscopy Society - vice chair of the Data Analysis in Microscopy (DAIM) subgroup