BLOG
Oscar’s Hut2Hut 2022
Oscars Hut2Hut is a 100-km trail run in the Victorian Alps with epic amounts of ascent and descent (5800 m of each) and a *lot* of technical sections. A good chunk of it is above the treeline with spectacular 360-degree views - on a good day... which is the attraction. I (Joel) ran it in 2019 (with perfect weather) and decided to go back for more this year, lured again by the scenery and the hope of good weather (or at least not sleet and sub-zero 100-km/h winds). As it turned out, I must have been in *someone's* good books because the weather turned it on again - perfect running conditions (~8-20 degrees across the time I was out there - 5 am till 1:30 am next day). These technical...
Taylor and Rezwan become truer and bluer
Congratulations to former Mackay lab PhD student Taylor Szyszka and current Ataide lab researcher Rezwan Siddiquee for having their Australian permanent residency just confirmed. They will be saying "that isn't a knife..." and sandpapering cricket balls before you know it!
Lab Xmas bbq and croquet afternoon
As has become our custom, we twisted Gareth's arm to book us an afternoon at the Marrickville Croquet Club for our Xmas do. It is a most excellent location - as well as the obvious croquet lawn, it features a lovely parkland setting, our own bbq, kitchen, covered seating, bbq and more...! And croquet is definitely a gam that everyone can enjoy (and they did). Many thanks to Gareth for patiently explaining the rules to many lab members and to Angela for orchestrating the event - a great time was had by all (with a little chess on the side).
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.
Just call him “Mr Secretary”
In a landslide victory (actually, I have no idea how the voting went) Jason Low has been elected by the people as the new secretary of the Sydney Protein Group - carrying the flag for the lab in its long association with the society [SPG website]. He'll have to get...
Ana’s paper comes out in JBC
Even though Ana is currently focusing mostly on more important matters, she has managed to get her second first-author paper from the lab published. You can check it out here.
Sarah is now officially Dr Sarah.
The final hurdle has been leapt! Sarah graduated with no mishaps (other than getting her shoe heel caught in a grating and nearly having to go up on stage in bare feet...) and can return to her postdoctoral position at the Crick Institute in London wearing her PhD...
Ana’s lab baby update…
Congratulations to Ana and Callum. Ana obviously felt left out of the baby congratulations wave and so decided to have her baby a week early! Emma Silva Smits was born yesterday morning at 10.18 am and was 48 cm tall, weighing 3.06 kg (although no confidence...
Welcome to new lab members – Mehdi, Jason (aka. Alex) and Taylor
We have three people joining Joel's lab in one week this week. First up, we have Mehdi Sharifitabar who hails from Iran and is starting his PhD. Taylor Szyszka (whose surname would surely win you a game of Scrabble if you could only spell it) is also a new PhD...
GATA1-DNA structure published
The long-awaited structure of the double ZF of GATA1 bound to DNA - a pseudopalindromic site - has come out [Pubmed or PDF via journal] in Protein Science, thanks to the work of Lorna (including some *very* funky multi-coloured gel shifts), Krystal and Nina - and...
…still they keep coming!
What can we say - the lab is clearly a fertile place...Born August 2 (very early in the morning) in Hong Kong. Congratulations to Eija and...
Two babies in one day?!
I think I can safely say that this is the first time we have had two 'lab babies' delivered on the same day... Raina Wong (PhD 2005) is now the proud mother of baby...
Even better than a poster prize…
All right - I suppose this is bigger news than the poster prize - Jason is now the proud father of young Jason Low Jr (at least I'm assuming that's his name) - although you can see that he clearly wasn't very interested in the details of the Gibson cloning protocol...
Jason wins a poster prize!
Jason attended the Bosch Institute Annual Scientific and Young Investigator's Meeting last week and walked away with the Genesearch Prize for an outstanding poster presentation. His poster title was 'What's in a NuRD? Strategies to elucidate the structure of...
Ana and Callum tie the knot
Ana headed off to Vanuatu last week with Callum, her betrothed, and made it all official in a ceremony that was fortunately *not* interrupted by a Category 5 hurricane (which is a shame, because then I could have made a crack about a whirlwind romance). Vanuatu was...
Mitchell shows his eye for a photo…
Fantastic photo of the moon setting over Sydney in the...