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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...
Lab alum Kaavya smashing it in GPCR world
This week's edition of Science magazine features an article on which Kaavya Krishna Kumar - PhD student with Dave Gell when he was here in our unit - is first-equal author. The paper describes the cryoEM structure of the glucagon receptor bound to a glucagon-like ligand and helps understand the mechanism by which the binding of glucagon to its GPCR receptor transmits a signal to the inside of the cell - increasing glucose production when blood glucose gets low. Great work Kaavya! [Figure taken from paper - which you can find HERE]
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.
Perils of trail running in Oz
Out for a run in Garigal National Park yesterday and I nearly stood on this guy. Lucky he was in a torpid...
Photo update
I just found a few photos that Katschi had taken at the McMaster's Beach lab retreat early in the year - so have stuck them up for posterity...
ARC grant success for Jacqui and Liza
Hooray - Jacqui and Liza secured a three-year ARC Discovery Grant with the title: "Inhibiting protein-protein interactions involved in neural development and disease", which will keep several PhD students in the style to which they have become accustomed (not quite...
Now, *this* is a crystal!
During the lab cleanup day today, Paul found this crystal in the bottom of his 5 M NaCl bottle, which had been sitting quietly on his shelf for about a year or so. WOW! That is a falcon tube lid, for reference... Nearly 100 years since the structure of NaCl was...
If you are looking for a good read…
...then look no further than the latest blockbuster from Mackay and Segal. Packed with juicy material on the bipartite selection of zinc fingers by phage display, the lowdown on inhibition of viral transcription by zinc finger proteins and the shocking tale of...
Robyn achieves closure
Robyn has now handed in the final corrected copies of her PhD thesis, and no doubt has now achieved that sense of inner calm that comes with closure of something so substantial... Just needs to tick off that graduation now before she can put "Dr" on her credit...
Long awaited photos of Joel’s European bike trip!
Phew! After two months, I have finally sifted through 2000 photos of my recent cycle touring jaunt through Europe and come up with a subset to keep! Having kept a travel diary while away was an inspired way of making it easier to sort through the photos and...
Joel successful at NSW Paddy Pallin Rogaine.
In the absence of any other interesting news at the moment, it can be reported that in a prime example of collaboration across the university, Joel and Andrew Black from the Research Office (together with non-USyd person Glenn Horrocks) got up to win the 6-hour...
Paul allowed to stay in country now!
Congratulations to Paul, who has just been granted Australian permanent residency, which among other benefits means that we won't have to keep hiding him in the solvent cabinet when the immigration people come to inspect the School.
Journal cover glamour for Fionna’s structure
The journal RNA selected Fionna's crystal structure of a ZRANB2 zinc finger bound to RNA as the cover illustration for their March 2010 issue. Today the cover of RNA, tomorrow the centrefold of...
Mitch wins poster prize at Genome meeting
Eschewing the usual Lorne Protein conference this year, Mitch and a small hardcore band of transcription people headed for the Lorne Genome Conference - same location, different science! As well as the chance to hear Phil Gregory from Sangamo talk about designer...
Former lab member becomes a dad
Gonzalo Durante (Gonn), a visitor to the lab from Spain in 2007 (wow - time flies!) had a busy week last July, when he (a) got married, (b) defended his PhD thesis (successfully) and (c) became a father. You can see the whole family. Now, *that* was a stressful...