BLOG
Rogaine outing with collaborator Alyson Ashe
Joel and Alyson participated in the 2022 Paddy Pallin 6-hour rogaine yesterday - organized by the NSW Rogaining Association. Weather was perfect and had a fantastic outing - Alyson's first ever rogaine, but she smashed it - a complete natural. Running strongly the whole way *and* keeping in contact with the map (very hard to do at the same time...). Finished up 5th of 150 teams (second mixed veterans team...) - a first outing to be pleased with!
New lab preprint – on the mechanism of CHD4-driven chromatin remodelling
Our new preprint has taken forever but is now on biorxiv - WHEW! We (Jessica, Hakimeh, and Bishnu - with great support from Jason, Ana, Stefan, Chandrika - and Santosh at the Synchrotron) examine the auxiliary domains of chromatin remodeller CHD4, finding an IDR that promotes remodelling in a way that is dependent on its amino-acid composition but not the sequence, an autoinhibitory domain that binds the DNA translocase domain and a SANT-SLIDE that binds DNA and relieves autoinhibition. Now to see if a journal likes it! Wish us luck... Set featured...
New manuscript on Biorxiv
Sandra Hake, our collaborator with a strong interest in histone variants and chromatin in general, has uploaded her latest manuscript to Biorxiv - a paper that focuses on the function of the chromatin associated protein HMG20A. Hakimeh has put her protein interactions skills to help Sandra out, by dissecting the interaction between HMG20A and the NuRD complex, which Sandra observed in some proteomics discovery experiments. You can check it out here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.04.490592v1
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.
Bogong to Hotham 2017
It has been 15 years or so since I'd run the Bogong to Hotham ultramarathon down in the Victorian Alps. I've always maintained that it is the most scenic ultra I've ever run in Australia, so I don't know why it's taken me so long to do it again! Anyway, I did get...
Kangaroo creek outing
Given the temperature today, I thought I'd head down to the Royal National Park and spend the morning wading down Kangaroo Crreek from Waterfall to Karloo Pool. Water was refreshing but almost too warm at Karloo! Then a trot back up to Heathcote and along the fire...
Matthews lab members at the Thompson Prize event
The Sydney Protein Group's annual Thompson prize event was the other day, and Neil Robertson was one of the finalists. Despite giving a sterling talk, he didn't walk away with the gong. He did however pick up the ATA Scientific Lorne travel award, while Gabrielle...
Scientists in Schools award for Joel
The Principal's Network of inner west Sydney schools recently had their awards ceremony and Joel was presented with an award to recognize the long-term connection he has had with Strathfield North Public School through the CSIRO's Scientists in Schools program -...
Taylor wins her first Australian prize
The School of Life and Environmental Sciences held its graduate research showcase recently, out at the Camden campus, and Taylor showed them how it was done, winning the prize for the best second year presentation. Nice work Taylor!
ARC grant success
Joel - working with Dave Segal from UC Davis - was lucky enough to pick up an ARC Discovery Project grant in the 2015 round to explore the creation of designer epigenetic regulators. Should be interesting...
We had a Ball!
AMOEBA ball was last night - with its theme of Under the Sea. Huge amount of work by Caitlyn, Taylor, Vania and the rest of the committee went into making a thoroughly enjoyable evening with jellyfish costumes aplenty! Photos please...
Joel awarded LabGear Discovery Science Award from ASBMB
At the recent ComBio conference in Brisbane, Joel was presented with theLabGear Discovery Science Award - which is given for distinguished contributions to the field of biochemistry and molecular biology. You can read about the award here and see the citation...
Kaavya wins Fellowship
Kaavya Krishna Kumar - a former student with Dave Gell and Joel - has just been awarded an Americal Diabetes Association fellowship to continue her work in the lab of Brian Kobilka at Stanford, where she is hammering away at the structures of membrane proteins...
Collaborative paper with Daniel Ryan at ANU comes out in JMB
Biswa, Steph and Ana can show off their latest paper now, which has come out in J Mol Biol. The paper describes the NMR structure of a domain that Daniel discovered in the chromatin remodeller CHD1 - from some careful analysis of sequence conservation - lots to be...
Joel wins Oz Rogaining Champs
Last weekend, Joel headed over to WA with rogaining companion Gill Fowler to compete in the Australian Rogaining Championships - a 24-h navigation event set in a mixture of farm and bushland near Nannup. After about 100 km of running/hiking over 24-h, Joel and Gill...
Neil’s paper accepted at Ang. Chemie
Congratulations to Neil, who has just had a paper accepted by Angewandte Chemie that describes his elegant FRET-based binding assays. It is available online here (or at Pubmed here) or if you prefer your science in German, here. Herzliche Gluumlckwuumlnsche,...