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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...
Jessica takes home the SPG Thompson Prize!
The Sydney Protein Group ran its annual Thompson Prize symposium last week - in which 5 PhD students duke it out by giving a talk on their work, and then the best presenter is chosen by a panel of judges to win the Thompson Prize (which brings with it glory *and* cash). This year, we had three international judges (who also talked at the symposium) who unanimously chose Jessica from our lab as the winner for her talk on the mechanism of nucleosome sliding by CHD4. A champion effort - and the first Thompson Prize winner from the Mackay lab! Not to be outdone, Charlotte snared one of the SPG Lorne Travelling Scholarships, which will nicely help fund her trip to the meeting in February....
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.
Fionna does it again!
Fionna has proven that her Lorne Poster Prize this year was no fluke by winning a poster prize at the 2006 ComBio conference in Brisbane. Her poster described structural and functional details of RanBP-like zinc finger domains.
Fionna wins Lorne poster prize
Fionna has scaled the heights of poster prizeness by picking up one of the poster prizes at the 2006 Lorne Protein Conference, for her poster on the splicing factor ZNF265.
Joel wins the Gottschalk medal
Joel has been awarded the 2006 Gottschalk Medal of the Australian Academy of Science. This award, in memory of Dr A Gottschalk, is given to recognise outstanding research in the medical sciences by scientists under 40 years. Joel is the second member of the School...
Daniel, Molly and Mugda successful at SPG Thompson Prize night
Daniel Ryan won the Sydney Protein Group Thompson Prize, for the best talk given by a young scientist, at the 2005 Thompson Prize Night at Macquarie University on Dec 7th. At the same event it was announced that Molly Clifton and Mugdha Bhati won travelling...
Jacqui wins ARC Grant
In yet more ARC success this year, Jacqui was successful in her bid for a Discovery Grant to fund her work on LIM domain proteins and their role in mammalian development.
Joel and Merlin score ARC Discovery Grant
In a continuation of their long collaboration, Joel and Merlin have been awarded a $550K ARC Discovery Grant to work on transcriptional regulators involved in hematopoiesis.
Ann wins ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship
Dr Ann Kwan has won a prestigious ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship in the current round of ARC funding. This fellowship is just reward for Ann's abilities and is a great stepping stone for her career as a researcher. She intends to work on protein design using...
Lab receives crystallization robotics system
We recently were awarded funding to set up a robotic crystallization facility, and have purchased liquid handling, crystallization and visualization robots in order to improve our hit rate with protein crystallization. These instruments have recently arrived in the...
Margie wins RD Wright Fellowship
Dr Margie Sunde has just been awarded a thoroughly deserved RD Wright fellowship from the NHMRC. This five-year fellowship is very prestigious and will give Margie a great chance to consolidate her research with independent funding.
NHMRC Project Grant success
Joel and Dave, in collaboration with David Adams at the Sanger Institute in the UK, have been awarded an NHMRC Project Grant to study the structure and function of a zinc finger protein with a putative role in the regulation of alternative splicing. This project...
Joel and Jacqui win NHMRC Program Grant
Together with Merlin Crossley, Joel and Jacqui were recently awarded $2.8M in a five-year NHMRC Program Grant, to persue their work on understanding the molecular basis of gene regulation. Only a handful of these grants, which emphasize collaborations between...
Fionna and Ann win prizes at East Coast Protein Meeting
Fionna Loughlin and Ann Kwan both won prizes at the recent East Coast Protein Meeting. Held at the Opal Cove resort in Coffs Harbour, ECPM was a superbly run and very interesting meeting chaired by Philippa Stokes (a third year PhD student in the lab) and put...