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April graduation!
Last week, we had one of the first live graduations we'd had for some time, and it was a bumper one - Angus, Marcus and Jen all graduated with their undergraduate degrees, as did Lou Irish from Ann's lab. So, it was all over to the old quad to congratulate them and grab a photo or two! Congratulations all - thoroughly deserved...
Ingrid becomes a mother….again!
Ingrid was as organized as usual, and gave birth to baby Scarlett at 7:20 am on April 9. Current reports are that Scarlett has not learned yet to cry, but communicates in a series of small toy-like squeaks - they can only hope that continues for some time... Ingrid, Scarlett - and Percy - are all doing well and no doubt girding their loins for an increased level of child care for the next 20 years or so...!
New research funding to develop selective insecticides!
Joel and Ron, teamed up with fellow SOLES academic Dr Emily Remnant, have been successful in procuring funding from Horticultural Innovation Australia (HIA) to create new insecticides that are safer and more selective. HIA collect levies from a wide range of produce growers and fund research into areas that will directly benefit those growers. Joel, Ron and Emily's project will focus on pollinator health, using structure-guided design approaches to create molecules that will selectively act on the honeybee pests Varroa destructor and/or the small hive beetle, while remaining innocuous to the honeybees themselves. The funding will complement a generous philanthropic donation that has...
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.
Back-to-back reviews from the lab in Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol.
We were lucky enough to have two reviews in the most recent issue of Current Opinions in Structural Biology - in the "Sequences and topology" section. Ngaio and Jacqui told the world about Mechanisms of DNA-binding specificity and functional gene regulation by...
Mackay lab science on Triple J and the ABC
Our recent paper in JBC on the role of CHD4 in the NuRD complex was picked up by the ANU media office because of Daniel's involvement in the paper. They put together a media release and it was picked up by several news outlets. Daniel was interviewed and there were...
A new visitor to the lab arrives from Tabriz in Iran
We have a new visiting lab member - Hakimeh is a PhD student with Siavoush Dastmalchi at the Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in Iran and has joined us for 6 months to try to collect some structural and binding data on a zinc-finger transcription factor with a...
Dorothy’s paper accepted at NAR
Dorothy has had a pretty painless first foray into the world of publishing papers with her paper on the RNA-binding properties of the transcription factor YY1 being accepted at Nucleic Acids Research. We were very pleased with the outcome given that we weren't...
Lab Hyams beach trip all done
The annual pilgrimage to Hyams Beach has been and gone - perfect weather and we didn't even get told off for being too noisy! Photos here.
Our latest CHD4 work makes it into JBC
Well, this one wasn't *quite* as straightforward as the Protein Science paper I mentioned recently, but in the end the reviewers *did* actually improve the paper I think. You can read about the efforts of Jason (L), Sarah, Ana, Hinnerk, Mario, Mattias and Nick -...
Our first EM data published in Protein Science
Whew! It was quite a roller coaster ride to this paper. After seeing an abstract by John Schwabe's group in Leicester that covered work very similar to what we've been hammering away at for a while, we scrambled to get a paper prepared and submitted. During the...
Bye bye Chay! – and hello Ninnie
Today we said bon voyage (or perhaps veilige reis) to Chayenne - our Dutch intern who has been with us for the last year. I'm pretty sure she qualified as the youngest person we have had in the lab, and she became an integral part of the Mackay lab while she was...
Ana’s CHD4 paper comes out
Ana's paper describing the structure of a slightly cryptic domain from CHD4 has come out in JBC. Check out the paper here or check out the structure here. As you can see here, it looks sort of like an HMG-box domain (CHD4 is in red - HMG-box domains are in grey)....
Ivan hands in!!
In a momentous occasion - for both Jacqui and Ivan - Ivan has handed in his PhD thesis. It was a mission, but it is a mission that has been completed!
Roland lands a job!
Roland - postdoc in the lab from 2006 till 2011 - has landed himself a Level B academic position in the School of Science and Health at Western Sydney University. He and Liza will make a great wife-and-husband team as they continue to build their lab together out...
In other SPG news…
...Athina has been awarded the SPG's Greg Ralston Prize, which will cover her costs for attending the Lorne Protein Conference in Feb 2016 - congratulations Athina!