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Joel hits the trails in the UTA 50-km race
A friend of Joel's had to pull out of the Ultra Trail Australia 50-km race in the Blue Mountains recently and offered Joel his entry at short notice. Given that he wasn't in 'race shape' - whatever that means - he went for the social option and ran the event juggling. Much less pressure to run a good time (and much more cheering from the crowd!). Weather held out and it was a great day out on the trails - he managed to get around in 7h 40 or so (25% of the way down the finishing list) - definitely happy with that. Strava post here.
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...
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.
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...
Fionna publishes a nice paper!
Fionna has just had her first paper published from her postdoc with Fred Allain at the ETH in Zurich - in NSMB, no less! While simultaneously juggling a small child (not literally) she has published her structure of the zinc knuckle domains of Lin28 (an inhibitor...