Professor Alice Pyne

MSci, MRes, EngD

School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering

Professor of Biophysics

UKRI Future Leaders Fellow

Head shot of Alice Pyne (young white woman with dark hair)
Profile picture of Head shot of Alice Pyne (young white woman with dark hair)
a.l.pyne@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 5969

Full contact details

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

I am a Professor of Biophysics 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