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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...
Flojo – a life
With great sadness, Jacqui and Joel shepherded Flojo to her last big sleep at the vet on the weekend. She was with us for 20 of her 22 years and was a part of our lives for so long. We were so lucky to have her as a companion. The house seems much quieter today - even though there are still three more cats sharing the space. Have compiled a (very) small subset of the photos we've taken of her over the years...
Xavier graduates (again!)
Joel managed to miss the graduation by being on the other side of the world but Jason was a more than worthy replacement - ...and Jessica and Karishma also sneaked into the academic procession (I like it - nice work!) so that Xavier got extra applause when he went up on stage. Congratulations Xavier - a big milestone!
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.
Showing off the coast to collaborators
We had a visit this week from David Doak - video game designer and architect of our new virtual reality app focused on allowing students to investigate the properties of polypeptides. Jane Allison - molecular dynamics aficionado from Auckland Uni who is involved in...
New lab paper hits the streets
Well, this paper took quite some time to come to fruition. Biswa from Melbourne worked hard to extract a structure from some less than friendly NMR data on a protein that was gifted to us by Wayne Patrick (formerly in Otago, now in Victoria University Wellington)....
Xavier gets to put the gown on
Xavier Reid graduated today with his BSc with first class Honours - and you can see him here accompanied by his co-supervisor, Dr Jason Low. No one will mention that Jason isn't wearing his UNSW gown... Xavier has taken the plunge to come back and start a PhD -...
Taylor’s PhD has been formally approved!
...so feel free to congratulate her if you see her around. I'm sure there will be a celebration to follow! Well done Taylor - it's a mighty achievement.
Mehdi and Jason’s paper accepted at FEBS J
In exciting news, we have had our paper "The stoichiometry and interactome of the Nucleosome Remodelling and Deacetylase (NuRD) complex are conserved across multiple cell lines" accepted in FEBS J [epub here]. It's particularly exciting both because it's Mehdi's...
Ingrid’s life changes dramatically…
Congratulations to Ingrid and Percy on the successful and drama-free (as much as it can be) birth of their son Toby Macindoe. He was born on Feb 18 at Prince of Wales and both he and his mother are doing just fine!
A nice piece of work from Nina
Nina Ripin, who spent some months in the lab as a Masters' student in 2011, is the lead author on a nice study focused on the RNA-binding properties of HuR in the latest PNAS. She has combined NMR and X-ray crystallography while working in Fred Allain's lab at ETH...
Lab Xmas bbq, 2018
This year, we had a return to the green lawn of Marrickville Croquet Club for our lab Xmas excursion. As always, a fine time was had by all - it really is a great venue for a day...
Taylor – our STEAMpunk star – in the media again
Lab alumna Taylor Szyszka has a position now at UTS where she is coordinating an outreach program for female high school students. It's a great program that is trying to reach both local and more distant schools in NSW and allowing them to highlight the...
What more could you ask for…
...as a thank you PhD present? I can't decide which is my favourite part - the craft beer, the Clif bars that have been lovingly brought all the way from the US or the NMR needlepoint! Well, OK, I can decide... Thanks very much Taylor! And great to hear that the...
Fionna’s new protein-RNA complex structure appears in Molecular Cell
Lab alumna Fionna Loughlin - now working at Monash - has published the culmination of several years of her postdoctoral work in Fred Allain's lab at ETH in Zurich just last week in Molecular Cell [here]. She has determined the structures of several domains of the...
Taylor hands in…
...and stops herself from otherwise going mad! Hooray - well done Taylor! Now you can get back to all those things you used to do, like sleeping, not spending every weekend in front of a computer in the lab - that sort of thing...