MACKAY & MATTHEWS LAB

Protein structure, function and engineering

Current Lab members

Dr Karishma Patel

Recently completed PhD student with Joel  who worked on the structure, function and inhibition of bromodomains. Bravely ventured across the Tasman for her PhD, doubling the number of people in the lab who know what jandals are. Currently juggling numerous diverse projects.

Prof. Joel Mackay

PI with longstanding interests in gene regulation, structural biology, statistics/data analysis, bike touring, rogaining, trail running – and cats.

Hon Prof Ron Hill

Honorary Professor with a ton of experience (at CSIRO) in insect transcription factor structure and function – hoping to do some fundamental biochemistry and drug discovery.

Dr Ingrid MacIndoe

Newly minted lab manager for the Structural Biology collective. After BSc Hons with Joel, a PhD with Margie and a school teaching sabbatical in Japan, and postdoctoral time with Joel learning (well, teaching herself) CRISPR gene editing (and with more diverse hair colours than before), she has decided that she wants to be running the show.

Anjumara Shaik

Dr Anjumara Shaik

Research assistant working with Joel to design safer and more selective insecticides by targeting an essential ligand-binding transcription factor. Hoping these proteins will be more amenable than the methyltransferases she cut her teeth on in a collaboration with Alyson Ashe over the last couple of years. Those were ornery proteins…

Walter Becker

Dr Walter Becker

Austrian postdoc working collaboratively with Rich Payne in Chemistry. Came to us via Katja Petzold’s lab in Sweden and has retained his interest in doing NMR on challenging targets. Oh, and makes a mean sourdough!

Paul Solomon

PhD student with Joel following on from TSP project. Wants to rebuild protein NMR data analysis from the bottom up – and build his own plane.

Xavier Reid

BSc Hons and PhD student (thesis awarded!) now working with Joel and Jason to examine preferences held by certain enzymes for post-translational modifications in endogenous nucleosomes. Also flirting with RaPID screening – and now cryoEM!

Rezwan Siddiquee

Lab web site consultant – and simultaneously research assistant with Sandro and Ann working on RNA and RNA-binding proteins.

Thu Vu

Research Assistant with Jacqui – continuing the family tradition of working in the lab here after her partner Cuong completed his PhD with Joel a few years ago.

Jen Suh

PhD student working with Joel (after BSc Hons work in 2021) on a couple of different projects to keep her on her toes – both focused on the design of molecules to modulate gene transcription for therapeutic or agricultural outcomes.

Xuefei Jing

PhD student working with Joel and Chandrika – bravely making her way across the Tasman to work on early phase drug discovery.

Lihua Yang

PhD student working with Joel to investigate the use of monobodies as reagents to modify the function of human transcription factors. Has come to the lab via China Pharmaceutical University and the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow – though he doesn’t seem to have picked up a Glaswegian accent (thank goodness!).

Lucien Lambrechts

PhD student working with Joel (following Hons in 2022), who impressively walked the line between chemistry and biochemistry to get native chemical ligation up and running in the lab – part of our gateway to designer nucleosomes for unravelling some of the mechanistic mysteries of chromatin remodelling. Now to implement what he’s learned!

Clement Luong

BSc Hons student with Joel in 2022 who wasn’t deterred by the 200+ kDa of the CHD4 chromatin remodelling enzyme and has stayed on as a research assistant to look further under the hood at CHD4 activity. After dabbling in amber stop codon suppression technology, his eyes have (understandably) lit up at the prospect of real-time single-molecule exploration of CHD4 activity in live cells.

Andrea Daners

Andrea Daners

PhD student working with Joel (following Hons in 2023) – focused on uncovering the mysteries of how CHD4 activity is regulated and well on her way to becoming the lab’s first genuine cryoEM practitioner.

Erekle Kobakhidze

2023 BSc Hons student wh worked with Joel (and Lucien and Clement) to try to unravel the mysteries of the (appallingly named) transcriptional regulator PWWP2A and its partners. Has stayed on as an RA prior to heading off overseas to expand his horizons!

Shahnaz Sultana

PhD student working with Joel. Coming to us all the way from Bangladesh to unravel the mysteries of gene regulation – and to modulate gene expression for useful outcomes!

Zahra Falahati

PhD student working with Joel – has arrived in Sydney from Iran via Canada to battle the Varroa mite using an structure based insecticide discovery approach.

Jakob Helmbrecht

Jakob Helmbrecht

Masters student from Heinrich Heine University in Germany, working with Joel on the mechanisms underlying regulation of CHD4 chromatin remodelling activity.

Jenny (Jialei) Jiang

BSc Hons student working with Joel and Lihua. Leaving her finance major behind to plunge into the worlds of gene regulation and mRNA display.

Simone Titterton

BSc Honours student working with Joel on the design of safer and more selective insecticides. Watch out if you’re a green peach aphid!

Sebastian Pratama

PhD student working with Joel to design inhibitors of transcriptional regulators. Comes from industry with experience in expressing proteins in 8000-L vessels – so tempting to try making one of our proteins on that scale… 🙂

Angela Cen

BSc Hons student working with Joel to peer under the hood of CHD4 and figure out how it works… Haven’t seen her companion in the lab yet though.