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Joel tackles the Stoos Trail ultra in Switzerland
Report from Joel: To cap off a week of hiking with Jacqui in the Swiss alps last week - and get a last glimpse at this extraordinarily scenic part of the world, I turned up for the 46-km Stoos Trail ultramarathon. It was a very local, low-key event with several distances available (only about 140 people in the ultra), meaning no need for an entry lottery like some events - he could just enter a few weeks prior and Bob’s your uncle. And of course the other reason I chose it was the scenery…is located on a mountain trail near Brunnen, south of Zurich - though hard to go wrong in Switzerland… Unfortunately the scenery comes at a price - the price being the initial 1200-m climb, an...
May graduation, 2024
We had a bumper edition of graduation recently with Kim receiving her PhD and Andrea and Erekle graduating with their BSc Hons (1st class) degrees. Kim has found herself a postdoc position in neurobiology - just where she was hoping to end up!), Andrea has committed to a PhD in the lab to pursue her structural biology ambitions (and is a few months in already), and Erekle is looking to head to Europe to do a research Masters. Yay everyone!
Auf wiedersehen Jakob…
Jakob Helmbrecht bravely ventured down under, risking crocodile attacks and leech bites to work in the lab under the tutelage of Clement and Lucien for 5 months - and he is now setting sail back to Germany to polish his Masters off by embarking on a little more research. It sounds like he might have itchy feet to venture overseas again, so who knows - we might see him back in Australia before too long... His farewell dinner featured Clement presenting his present - and Jakob's last chance (for the time being) to sample Australian Thai food...
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!
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...
Joel successful with NHMRC Ideas Grant (hooray!)
Grants from NHMRC and ARC are becoming a bit harder to come by in recent years, so we were very relieved to secure an Ideas Grant working in collaboration with Dr Alex Norman - a peptide chemist and existing collaborator with the group of Richard Payne in Chemistry...
It’s raining babies!
Recent PhD graduate Mehdi and his wife Diba have just welcomed a new family member - their daughter Rosha who was borne at 00:34 on 9 August this year. All are healthy and raring to go on their latest project. And you thought the NuRD complex was challenging,...
Jason wins drug discovery seed grant
Jason has been successful in winning a $15,000 grant from the ECR seed funding program of the USyd Drug Discovery Initiative. This grant will help him pursue his mRNA-display based hunt for inhibitors of oncogenic transcription factors. Super stuff Jason!
Did I already mention that there are a lot of lab babies appearing lately?
Announcing the arrival into the world of Oren Lucev O’Connell, born on last Saturday morning at 3:49 am (GMT -4) and weighing in at 8lb 2oz. Direct report from new dad Mitch: "Mum (Annabelle) and baby are doing wonderfully, and we’re having fun adjusting to our new...