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The Rock
In news of great excitement, I can announce that there is another lab matrimonial union on its way! Taylor and Rezwan have announced their engagement - in fine style while on a small weekend getaway in Mudgee. They have decided to make the most of the whole thing by having *3* weddings - so stay tuned to find out more! Congratulations to both of them!
Dave Gell’s new paper featuring old-school biochemistry
Molecular Microbiology has now published the epic piece of work spearheaded by ex-lab member Dave Gell, who is now resident at the University of Tasmania. Dave had been approached by local microbiologists who noted that some strains of Haemophilus haemolyticus inhibited the growth of Haemophilus influenzae. Dave heroically purified the factor that caused this inhibition by using culture medium - old school biochemistry! Amazingly, he found that it was a heme-binding protein - his favourite class of proteins! They could hardly have found a better person in the country to characterize this protein if they'd tried! Read all about it...
Our RaPID screening manuscript is up on bioRxiv
The project that Karishma has been hammering away at for the last couple of years - with substantial input from collaborators Louise Walport (Crick Institute, London) and Toby Passioura (now USyd) - has been somehow condensed into a manuscript and posted on bioRxiv HERE. It's a massive amount of work by them and by far the most comprehensive study of what sort of things come out of a RaPID screen (see crystal structures from the manuscript arrayed below...) - let's see if we can convince someone to publish...
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!
Its official! We work in Sydney’s ugliest building!
Letter to the editor in The Sydney Morning Herald (Tues 19 May, 2009): Response to: "Star City, the ugliest building in Sydney (Letters, May 18)?" "The interior, perhaps, but from the outside it is a model of grace and beauty compared with the UTS Tower, voted...
Jacqui’s LIM complex structure used as eye candy!
The new Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine (LIMM - nice...) has a vert attractive logo on their website! Can you pick which structure it is?
The 800 MHz spits out its first HSQC!
Woo-hooo - the new Bruker Avance 3 800-MHz NMR spectrometer recorded its first 15N and 13C HSQC spectra today, so we have taken our first steps in the ultra-high-field world. Exciting! The cryosystem and probe will be installed over the next 10 days or so, and then...
Mugdha and Ingrid blitz the Lorne Conference!
Mugdha and Ingrid both won poster prizes at the recent Lorne Conference on Protein Structure and Function for their presentations on LIM homeodomain and hydrophobin proteins, respectively. Miriam-Rose Ash and David Jacques from the crystallography side of the...
Ann appointed as NMR Instrument Manager
Ann has finally given in to her desire to work in or near a workshop and been appointed as our new NMR Instrument Manager. In this, she follows in the footsteps of Dr Bill Bubb, who did an excellent job of keeping our 400 and 600-MHz instruments in tip-top...
Ann wins ANZMAG Young Investigator Award
Ann was awarded the Young Investigator Medal from the Australian and NZ Society for Magnetic Resonance. This medal recognizes an outstanding contribution to the field of magnetic resonance in Australia and New Zealand, by a researcher who is less than 38 or is less...
Joel wins 100-mile race!
On the weekend, Joel ran in the Great North Walk 100-miler, run (oddly enough) on the Great North Walk between Newcastle and the northern reaches of Sydney (Patonga). Improbably, he crossed the line first in 26 h 31 min - his first ever win in a solo race. Soon he...
Fellowship success
Not only will we be able to buy tips, but Joel and Jacqui will also be able to feed their cats next year. Both of us have secured NHMRC fellowships (SRF B level) to keep us off the streets for the next five years. What a relief!
Grant success
Hooray - we will be able to buy pipette tips next year! Joel was awarded two ARC Discovery Grants and Jacqui one. Joel's two projects are focused on (a) new functions for zinc finger transcription factors (in collaboration with Merlin Crossley) and (b) novel...
Robyn wins a prize at ComBio 2008
Robyn showed them what she was made of at the recent ComBio conference in Canberra, winning a poster prize for her presentation on the peptide-binding properties of PHD domains. Congratulations Robyn - well deserved!
Wendy on the radio
Wendy Yung, an MSc graduate from the Mackay lab, appeared on ABC National Radio the other day. Wendy has been working at Questacon, the National Science and Technology Centre, for a number of years now, and travels around the country with their science roadshow,...
Mudgha is in the money…
Mugdha Bhati, a smiley PhD student from Jacqui's lab, has been busy winning prizes and fellowships to attend a couple of crystallography conferences. She was awarded a Maslen scholarship from the Society of Crystallographers in Australia and New Zealand to go to...