Professor Martin tangney
Lecturer, School of Life, Sport and Social Sciences
email. m.tangney@napier.ac.uk
tel. +44 (0)131 455 2217
Overview
Professor Tangney is an internationally recognised expert in carbohydrate utilisation and gene regulation in solventogenic clostridia. He has worked in a diversity of research environments, including industry in Denmark, government Research Institutes in France and Finland, and highly respected Universities in Germany, Ireland and the UK. He has published extensively in leading scientific journals as well as being an inventor on several patents. Professor Tangney has hosted numerous national and international scientific meetings and workshops, including the prestigious international conference on solventogenic clostridia Clostridium VIII held in Edinburgh in 2004; he will also host the next FEMS Council Delegates meeting in Sept 2008. Professor Tangney is a scientific advisor to the board of Green Biologics Ltd and he serves on the committees of Scottish Microbiology Society (as the meetings convenor) and. TechLink UK-Ireland. His current research focuses primarily on the microbial production of butanol as a second generation biofuel and he has numerous active research collaborations in this area with both industrial and academic groups funded by a variety of sources, including the BBSRC, EPSCR and both SME as well as large international industrial partners.
Teaching Interests
Professor Tangney lecturers at Napier on a number of diverse undergraduate and postgraduate modules in the areas of microbiology, molecular biology, biochemistry and bioinformatics. He has an interest in learning platforms and has written and developed distance learning books as part of the Napier franchise with Hong Kong.
Professor Tangney is currently on sabbatical from all teaching activities, to focus on research and knowledge transfer in the area of biofuel development.
Research Interests
There are few subjects as topical as global warming and the associated importance of reducing carbon emissions. In this respect the development of the biofuel industry is recognised as key. The UK Road Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) requires that 5% of the UK’s transport fuel comes from a renewable source by 2010, while the EU has decreed that biofuels should account for 5.75% of total fuel sales by 2010 and 10% by 2020. This stimulated a global race to internationalise biofuels which, unlike petrol, are carbon neutral and do not contribute to global warming.
Butanol is now recognised as an extremely important “second generation biofuel” and is considered superior to ethanol for many reasons. As butanol is a one of the by-products from solventogenic clostridia an obvious route to large scale butanol production is via industrial fermentation, and indeed such a process is known historically. The industrial acetone/butanol/ethanol (ABE) fermentation by solventogenic clostridia was once one of the largest biotechnology processes in the world (second only to alcohol production by yeast). The decline since the 1950’s was due to an inability to compete with the petrochemical industry, however global demand for biofuel has stimulated fresh interest in these organisms.
As a recognised international expert in solventogenic clostridia, Professor Tangney’s current research focuses primarily on projects aimed at improving the productivity of bio-butanol production (as a second generation biofuel) from renewable resources by species of solventogenic clostridia. He is also engaged in developing novel renewable substrates for this fermentation process while also contributing to developing an increased understanding of the regulation of growth and metabolism of species of solventogenic clostridia.
Profesor Tangney is the Director of the Biofuel Research Centre at Edinburgh Napier University.
Professional activities
- Consultant for Green Biologics Ltd
- Former consultant to Novozymes, Denmark
- Ambassador for the Edinburgh Convention Bureau
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- Meetings convenor for the Scottish Microbiology Society
- Director on the board of Techlink Network Ltd
- Serves on the committee of Techlink-UK Ireland
Selected Grants and Contracts
Current grants/funding include industrial CASE awards from the BBSRC, the EPSRC, and research contracts with Green Biologics Ltd and Saudi Aramco.
Selected Publications
Tangney, M. and Mitchell W.J. (2007). Characterisation of a glucose phosphotransferase system in Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 74, 398–405.
Yu, Y, Tangney, M., Aass, H. C. and Mitchell, W.J. (2007). Analysis of the mechanism and regulation of lactose transport and metabolism in Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 73, 1842-1850.
Lee, J., Mitchell W.J., Tangney, M. and Blaschek H.P. (2005). Evidence for the presence of an alternative glucose transport system in Clostridium beijerinckii NCIMB 8052 and the solvent hyper-producing mutant BA101. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 71 (6), 3384–3387
Tangney, M. and Mitchell W. J. Regulation of catabolic gene systems. In: Handbook on clostridia . P. Dürre (Ed). CRC Press LLC, ISBN 0-8493-1618-9 Chapter 25 pp583-606, 2005
Mitchell, W. J. and Tangney, M. Carbohydrate uptake by the phosphotransferase system and other mechanisms. In: Handbook on clostridia . P. Dürre (Ed). CRC Press LLC, ISBN 0-8493-1618-9 Chapter 8 pp155-176, 2005
Tangney M. and Mitchell W.J (2004). Clostridium tetani encodes a phosphocarrier protein HPr. Microbiology, 150 (3), 525-6.
Tangney, M., Galinier, A., Deutscher, J. and Mitchell W.J. (2003). Analysis of the elements of catabolite repression in Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824. Journal of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology 6, 6-11.
Tangney, M., Winters, G. T. and Mitchell, W. J. (2001). Characterization of a maltose transport system in Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824. Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology 27 (5), 298-306
Kamburova, M., Tangney, M. and Priest, F. G. (2001). Regulation of polyglutamic acid synthesis by glutamate in Bacillus licheniformis. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 67 (2), 1004-1007.
Tangney, M. and Mitchell, W. J. (2000). Analysis of a catabolic operon for sucrose transport and metabolism in Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824. Journal of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology 2, 71-80.
Jørgensen, P. L., Tangney, M., Pedersen, P. E., Hastrup, S., Diderichsen, B. and Jørgensen, S. T. (2000). Cloning and sequence of an alkaline protease gene from Bacillus lentus, and amplification of the gene on the B. lentus chromosome using an improved technique. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 66, 825-827.