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Our first mRNA display paper hits the internet in PNAS
A big paper for us - out now here! Working with Louise Walport and Toby Passioura, who were themselves working with Hiroaki Suga at the University of Tokyo at the time, we have used Suga's RaPID version of mRNA display to discover cyclic peptide inhibitors of the BRD3 and BRD4 bromodomains that have nM to pM affinities and - in some cases - very high specificity compared to small-molecule inhibitors. One of the cool things about the RaPID setup is that you can incorporate unnatural amino acids - and our peptides all had one or more acetyllysine residues. We see a wide range of binding modes, giving hints about ways that one could design much more specific bromodomain inhibitors than are...
Jason heads to Blighty
Former lab member Jason Schmidberger (postdoc 2015-6) has packed up his Akubra (and his family) and made a big move to the UK to join the drug discovery alliance and consulting company Evotec. Looks like an exciting company and we look forward to hearing from him what it's like out in the real world!
Big news (x2) for Michael Webster in Strasbourg
Michael - an Hons student in the lab in 2012 - has been extra productive in his postdoc in Strasbourg lately. Not only has he just had a paper come out in Science this week showing the interaction between bacterial RNA polymerase and the ribosome (the basis for the coupling of transcription and translation): [check it out here] but he has just become a father to Hugo! Busy boy! - and congratulations on both fronts...
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!
Katschi’s done it!
The other day Katschi did that momentous deed - handing in her PhD thesis. Yay! No more staying up all night (unless she wants to of course)... Well done Katschi - fantastic effort!!
Tom’s Cambridge fundraising is going well…
Tom - Jacqui's 2011 Bsc Hons student - has just won a University of Sydney Scholarship to pay part of his costs for doing a PhD at Cambridge (the UK one - not the rural sheep farming place in the North Island of NZ) - hopefully with one more lamington drive, he...
Saad’s new heir
In case you were thinking that Saad had been a bit distracted lately or were wondering why he wasn't here today, I can show you the reason - meet! I can see the resemblence... All set for a busy next six months on all fronts...
Mitchell’s amateur astronomy effort
Mitchell, one of our resident crystallographers and amateur astronomers, was on the ball this morning and managed to cunningly capture the transit of Venus using his binoculars and a white surface - cool. As he noted, it was probably the last time he was going to...
Paul insisted I put this up…
A surreptitious recording of an effort from our first jam yesterday with a 4-member ensemble - Paul on bass, Mitch on drums, Elissa Liew from Micro on keyboard (she sounds great here!) and yours truly on the tenor sax (and sounding a bit thin). [listen]. Felt great...
We are slowly turning Ana from the dark side…
Ana recorded her first 15N-HSQC today - and it was a ripper! Who needs those fiddly crystal things...? We will have her writing pulse programs by the end of the year......
A bumper week for papers
Jacqui has had a good couple of weeks, with 3 papers getting accepted or reviews that indicate only minor revisions are required - that backlog of papers is getting slowly but steadily cleared!
Michael’s quotable quotes from the lab retreat
How he remembered them, I don't know - was he wearing a wire? 1. "Suck it up, princess." (with the appropriate accent) 2. "You're in for a flaming sausage of a surprise - if you catch my drift." 3. "The mask of Dorro." 4. "Having to run 22 km to get ping pong...
Angela wins award!
Angela Nikolic, our intrepid lab manager, won the 2012 Regina Zabaras Memorial Award, in recognition of the contributions she makes to the smooth running of the School (as well as keeping us all in line). Well done Angela, we're very proud of you!
Young Investigator Award for David
David Jacques, who has spent a year with us (after a PhD with the Trewella/Guss labs) working wonders with crystals and small angle X-ray scattering, won a Young Investigator Award at the 2012 Lorne Protein Conference. In his award talk, David presented...
Poster Victories at Lorne Proteins
Soumya Joseph, Kaayva Kumar and Vanessa Morris all won poster prizes at the Lorne Conference for Protein structure and Function. We're very proud of them all. A bonus this year is that winning the prizes makes them eligible for winning a sponsored trip to the...