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Ansh Kumar
Ansh is a 2026 BSc Hons student working with Joel and Zahra to understand more about transcriptional regulation in the Varroa mite, with the goal of designing acaricides that are safer for bees and people!
Does BRD4 care about histone acetylation – maybe just a *little* bit…
Our latest paper has just been released in Nucleic Acids Research: https://academic.oup.com/nar/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/nar/gkaf1406/8406434 This paper has been masterminded by Lucien and Xavier - and presents some surprising findings on the ability of BRD4 to recognize acetylated lysines. Almost all of the prior hundreds of studies on BRD4 and its paralogues have indicated that it has a high preference for binding histone peptides that have acetylated lysines - and that some acetylation patterns are highly prefered over others. However, Lucien and Xavier (and others!) have shown that - when you use full length BRD4 and you use recombinant nucleosomes bearing histone acetylation -...
Lab baby alert!
Shahnaz has decided that doing a PhD isn't sufficiently challenging so she has upped the ante with the recent arrival of her (and her husband's!) beautiful new baby Mehnaz! There is a strong consensus that her cheeks are very pinchable - so she may or may not want to visit the lab too often... Congratulations Shahnaz - given what you've just been through, finishing a PhD will likely be far less epic!
Wanted: postdoc biochemist/structural biologist to work with Richard Payne, Sydney/US startup INSAMO (and me). Goal: use cyclic peptide mRNA display to design cell-permeable peptide-based protein degraders: https://usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/USYD_EXTERNAL_CAREER_SITE/job/Darlington-Campus/Postdoctoral-Researcher-in--Peptide-Based-Drug-Discovery_0131612-1
Email for more info: joel.mackay@sydney.edu.au
Have been off X for months but had to log in to see response to AF3. I am much less smart than the authors - but am I (and Erin) the only ones to think that the helical afros that it makes out of IDRs is totally weird? Am I missing something?
This is supercool, but it does like folding everything, even things that are probably disordered... As always, use with caution, and consult your friendly structural biologist before investing too much in low confidence predictions.
Our latest preprint – super selective BET bromodomain inhibitors that act as remote control molecular glues!
OK - maybe that's hyping it up a bit, but these cyclic peptides are pretty amazing, we think! This is the latest chapter in Karishma's PhD work (with a massive effort by Biswa Mohanty too!): Peptide molecular glues select between BET paralogues by exploiting...
Simone graduates – and comes back for more
Last week, Simone graduated with first class Honours - on a lunchbreak from the PhD that she has started in the lab following that Honours year! Jasmine from Sandro and Ann's lab graduated alongside her - on a perfect day for standing on the lawn! [envira-gallery...
The queen of the lab came back to visit her subjects!
Was fantastic to see Karishma last week when she passed through Sydney on a break from her posdoctoral work at Oxford. Was a good chance to try to get her last couple of papers from the lab sorted out before (in other exciting news) she takes up a very prestigious...
Karishma (and Biswa’s) magnum opus makes it onto Biorxiv
The first step in the publication journey... This is the paper that describes our BET inhibitors that are super-selective - one of which seems to act by sensing differences in conformational dynamics between paralogues. It only binds to BRD2-BD1 - the only BD1 that...
Dorothy ties the knot!
Former Mackay lab PhD student Dorothy Wai - author of such well-known studies as "The BRD3 ET domain recognizes a short peptide motif through a mechanism that is conserved across chromatin remodelers and transcriptional regulators" has recently tied the knot with...
Engagements are the flavour of the last month or so!
We finished off 2024 with one current lab member getting engaged and one former lab member also getting engaged! Recently completed BSc Hons student Simone is now engaged to her partner Shay (who recently completed a Film Studies degree at USyd and is hoping to...
Structural biology’s annual Xmas croquet picnic – 2024 edition
Perfect weather and a newly renovated lawn greeted us upon arrival at the Marrickville Croquet Club - and of course our resident croquet host-tutor, the recently un-retired Prof. Gareth Denyer. A total of 28 of the Structural Biology cooperative turned up, many...
Honours ice cream celebration!
The BSc Hons students for 2024 have given all the talks, submitted all the theses and generally ticked all the boxes that are required for the year and have had the chance to enjoy a well deserved gelato from Messina up in Newtown. Well done Simone, Jenny and...
Clement’s iGEM team win big!
Clement (along with syn bio lab heads Dr Yu Heng Lau and Dr Constance Bailey) coached a team of undergraduate students - of mixed year and mixed degree major - for this year's iGEM competition, which they got to present in Paris at the big jamboree. They were...
Joel attends ICMRBS in Seoul – and checks out the impressive bike infrastructure of S. Korea
Travelled to Seoul for the ICMRBS NMR conference - with my old Ti road bike in tow to spend 3 days on 4 rivers before the meeting. It’s a 600-km purpose built separate bike path from the top to the bottom (Incheon to Busan). It was my first time in South Korea so...
Joel tackles the Stoos Trail ultra in Switzerland
Report from Joel: To cap off a week of hiking with Jacqui in the Swiss alps last week - and get a last glimpse at this extraordinarily scenic part of the world, I turned up for the 46-km Stoos Trail ultramarathon. It was a very local, low-key event with several...