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The lab hits the big time on Youtube
We recently had a camera crew in the lab from Horticultural Innovation Australia. They are providing some funding for our work to design new, selective pesticides targeting the Varroa mite that has made its way to Australian in the last year or so and is causing much concern (it's already been causing much concern in the rest of the world for some years!). They spent a long time taking footage and in the end we made the cut to their 2023 annual report video...which you can see here. Today, the Hort Innovation annual report, tomorrow Hollywood...!
Lucien picks up a poster prize at the annual meeting of the ANZSCDB – not our usual hunting ground!
Several lab members took the opportunity to attend the annual meeting of the NSW chapter of the Aus and NZ Society for Cell and Molecular Biology - which was held at Uni of Sydney a couple of weeks ago. Posters were presented and Lucien impressed them sufficiently with his work on the chromatin remodelling enzyme CHD4 to pick up one of their poster prizes (and spread some protein biochemistry to the cell biologists!). Well done Lucien...!
Zahra and Erekle show us how it’s done at the ASBMB meeting
At the recent ASBMB annual meeting in Canberra (which was an excellent meeting, I thought - great speakers, great venue, nice size and really nice feeling), Erekle Kobhakidze (2023 Mackay lab BSc Hons student) and Zahra Falahati (Mackay lab first year PhD student) both did a most excellent job of presenting their posters - so excellent that they both picked up poster prizes for their efforts. Erekle talked about his Hons project looking at the chromatin binding proteins BRD2 and PWWP2A, whereas Zahra told people about her work starting to look at designing inhibitors of the ecdysone receptor as insecticides. Kudos to both of them! [and to the other lab members who presented at the...
Hooray - we (led by Jason Low, Karishma Patel in collab with @lwalport, Toby Passioura, @PayneResearch and Suga labs) just made JBC 2023 with this mRNA display work. Q: What is the best natural target seq for BET bromodomains - and which proteins have it?https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbc.2023.105482
Yep - I can say I haven't seen that before...
A NuRD for all seasons…
...is the title of our new review that is going to appear in Trends in Biochem Sci very soon. A sneak preview is here. In the paper - shaped by Xavier and Jason - we ponder on the observation that multiple paralogues are observed for all members of our favourite...
Varroa work in the spotlight
Our work to design safer insecticides - particularly ones targeting honeybee pests (which was funded recently by Horticultural Innovations Australia) - has become more immediately topical overnight with a report (and followups 1 2) that the dreaded Varroa mite has...
Rogaine outing with collaborator Alyson Ashe
Joel and Alyson participated in the 2022 Paddy Pallin 6-hour rogaine yesterday - organized by the NSW Rogaining Association. Weather was perfect and had a fantastic outing - Alyson's first ever rogaine, but she smashed it - a complete natural. Running strongly the...
New lab preprint – on the mechanism of CHD4-driven chromatin remodelling
Our new preprint has taken forever but is now on biorxiv - WHEW! We (Jessica, Hakimeh, and Bishnu - with great support from Jason, Ana, Stefan, Chandrika - and Santosh at the Synchrotron) examine the auxiliary domains of chromatin remodeller CHD4, finding an IDR...
New manuscript on Biorxiv
Sandra Hake, our collaborator with a strong interest in histone variants and chromatin in general, has uploaded her latest manuscript to Biorxiv - a paper that focuses on the function of the chromatin associated protein HMG20A. Hakimeh has put her protein...
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...
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......
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...
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...
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...
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...
Our first step into the world of invertebrate transcription factors…
As part of a collaboration with Ron Hill (formerly CSIRO - now part of the structural biology discipline here at USyd), Jason and Joel helped out (well, mostly Jason) with Ron's characterization of the insect juvenile hormone receptor. Along with the ecdysone...