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Ahhh – it’s still one of my favourite sights in science…
...a sweet 15N-HSQC titration. Last minute effort to add that extra piece of preliminary data to the grant application - and who would have believed that it would actually pan out - but it did! All thanks to Ingrid's protein production skills and Alex Norman's (postdoc in collaborator Rich Payne's lab) peptide synthesis expertise. I just got to do the only bit that I know how to do - the HSQC titration. Let's hope the assessors enjoy looking at it as much as I do!
Xmas stroll in the Royal National Park
Joel and Jacqui took advantage of the cool weather to head down the RNP and see what the wildflower situation was like. It's still pretty impressive - and we even spotted some native orchids with amazing dappled petals. The bridge at Audley is very Monet-esque too... And plenty of wildlife on show, mostly in the lizard department. Then there were the Aboriginal carvings hidden away on the Uloola ridge...
You don’t get this aesthetic beauty from Alphafold…
We have just solved a structure working with SOLES colleague Tara Christie (not to mention Toby Passioura and Rich Payne). The structure determination was a bit of a wrestle for Tara (as you'd expect at 3.9 A!), but gee - you can't help but love the packing in the crystal (side-on and end-on views provided). Maybe we should be using this protein to make nanotubes!
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?
Amazing story from the lab down the corridor - @RezwanSidd working with Sandro Ataide and Ruth Hall in @SydneySOLES at @Sydney_Science - now they will be thrown into the gladiators' pit I suspect with the other protagonists that prowl this landscape! 
Great piece of work!
Saad hands in!
Saad has just summited that seemingly gargantuan mountain of thesis writing and handed in a very nice looking PhD thesis on interactions within his favourite protein complex. Now, time to take a breather and try to remind his family what he looks like! Well done...
A blast from the past…
Look what turned up in a lab cleanup a little while ago. What is the probability of finding a gel that has lanes on it from both Jacqui *and* Joel being at the bench at the same time?!?! See it with your own eyes! I would note that the lanes with the best...
Lab retreat done and dusted for 2013
The annual lab retreat to Hyam's Beach (whitest sand in the world - and possibly the squeakiest too) went off without any significant hitches last weekend. Fantastic weather, and we even had some intrepid cyclists transporting themselves the 30 km from Nowra to...
Another boy off to Blighty
Morgan has fared us well now and headed off to the UK to work with Alessio Ciulli, who works on the structural biology of protein-protein interactions (sounds familiar!) and who is in the process of moving from Cambridge to Dundee. I hope Morgan has packed his...
Flyp’s latest paper is out…
Congrats Flyp (and Chu Wai and Ann and others...!): Stokes et al., (2013) Structural Basis of the Interaction of the Breast Cancer Oncogene LMO4 with the Tumour Suppressor CtIP/RBBP8 J Mol Biol 425,...
Boys bound for Blighty
Herman and Michael have both succeeded in their quest to leave southern climes for PhDs in the UK. Herman has been awarded a Wellcome Fellowship to fund his PhD at the University of York with Fred Antson,, starting later this year. Michael won a scholarship to fund...
A good-value Hons project!
Herman won a poster prize at the recent Lorne Protein Conference for his dehalogenase work. He must be getting sick of winning them by now, surely.
Katschi gets the final go-ahead
Katschi has had the final stamp of approval on her PhD thesis, and will be handing in the absolutely final, bound and authorized copy this week, crossing her fingers to make the April graduation. I'm guessing she's quite pleased about that...
Herman is a winner too!
In a symbolic event for our historically NMR-focused lab, Herman has won a poster prize at the Asian Crystallography Conference that was held in Adelaide last week. The meeting also featured the Bragg Symposium commemorating the contribution made by the...
Morgan wins the SPG Thompson Prize!
Tonight, the Sydney Protein Group had their annual Thompson Prize event, pitting PhD students from around the region against each other in 10-minute talks. We had Mitch and Morgan going head to head with students from a range of places, and in a tough context...
Review from lab accepted at Nature Reviews Cancer
Hooray - Jacqui, Krystal and Soumya have just had a review accepted in Nature Reviews Cancer on the involvement of LMO proteins in cancer. Good timing with grant (and fellowship) season around the corner...!