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Varroa work in the spotlight
Our work to design safer insecticides - particularly ones targeting honeybee pests (which was funded recently by Horticultural Innovations Australia) - has become more immediately topical overnight with a report (and followups 1 2) that the dreaded Varroa mite has been detected in beehives in Newcastle, near Sydney. Australia is one of the only countries left in the world where this pest has been kept at bay, and there are concerns that it is only a matter of time before the mite finds its way in and takes hold. Yesterday Joel talked with Sarah McDonald on ABC Drive Sydney radio about the issue. You can listen here (5 min 15 s through to 15 min or so), and today talked with ABC Rural...
Rogaine outing with collaborator Alyson Ashe
Joel and Alyson participated in the 2022 Paddy Pallin 6-hour rogaine yesterday - organized by the NSW Rogaining Association. Weather was perfect and had a fantastic outing - Alyson's first ever rogaine, but she smashed it - a complete natural. Running strongly the whole way *and* keeping in contact with the map (very hard to do at the same time...). Finished up 5th of 150 teams (second mixed veterans team...) - a first outing to be pleased with!
New lab preprint – on the mechanism of CHD4-driven chromatin remodelling
Our new preprint has taken forever but is now on biorxiv - WHEW! We (Jessica, Hakimeh, and Bishnu - with great support from Jason, Ana, Stefan, Chandrika - and Santosh at the Synchrotron) examine the auxiliary domains of chromatin remodeller CHD4, finding an IDR that promotes remodelling in a way that is dependent on its amino-acid composition but not the sequence, an autoinhibitory domain that binds the DNA translocase domain and a SANT-SLIDE that binds DNA and relieves autoinhibition. Now to see if a journal likes it! Wish us luck... Set featured...
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!
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...
Mehdi funds his Lorne conference visit through the SPG
At the Sydney Protein Group's recent Thompson Prize evening, Mehdi picked up the ATA Scientific Lorne Travel Award (presented by Mark Larance), which will help him attend the 2019 Lorne Conference on Protein Structure and Function. Well done...
Joel’s tenth anniversary of Scientists in Schools
Earlier this week, Joel visited his favourite primary school - Strathfield North Public School - where he worked with ~100 year 6 students to get them making electric motors and looking at a dodgy hand-made generator that he has made from a Falcon tube, a film...
Ida ties the knot
Ida Lindstrom, who visited Joel's lab from Sweden during her Masters, has returned home and has been busy both starting a PhD in the area of protein interactions involving intrinsically disordered proteins in gene regulation - and getting married. Here is one shot...
Kyrgyzstan on two wheels
Joel ventured out recently for a week of bike touring in Kyrgyzstan - place of wide open spaces, friendly people and spectacular mountain scenery (and yaks). You can read all about it (and look at the pictures)...
Steph gets the “all clear” on her thesis!
The official letter came today stating that Steph had "satisfied the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Science)". Done and dusted! Congratulations from everyone in the lab Steph - here's hoping it leads to great things...!
Lab Retreat 2018: Nelson Bay
The lab just returned from our annual lab retreat- this year in a new location! Traditionally the retreat is held amid the white sands of Hyams beach, but this year we opted for a trip up north to Nelson Bay. In the spirit of new traditions, Jacqui and Ann invented...
Taylor graces the small screen again
In the latest installment of her hit show on Channel 7 - Get Clever - Taylor shows off her fire-making skills for Australia's youth. You can check it out here (click the photo to access the link...) - look at about...
Marylène has been extra busy…
Not only has she been planning a wedding, but she's been publishing senior author papers too. Here is her paper in J Mol Biol describing the combinatorial design of a nanobody that can recognized structured RNA molecules: Marylène's paper! A nice piece of...
Marylène et Mathieu se marient
Lab alumnus and phage display aficianado Marylène - who has returned to her native Belgium to forge her research career - recently married her beau Mathieu in what looks to have been a very stylish event. Marylène looked even happier than she was in the lab - which...
New PNAS Paper for Neil, Ngaio, and Athina!
Two papers in two days! Neil, Ngaio, and Athina just had some very exciting binding findings published in PNAS! This work includes Neil's crazy binding kinetics equations, some gorgeous EMSA data from Ngaio, and other data from Athina, Matt, and Ann. The paper...
New JBC Paper for Dorothy and Taylor!
Hot off the presses! Dorothy and Taylor's new ET paper just came out in JBC! This work features two solution NMR structures of the ET domain of Brd3 bound to peptides from chromatin remodelling proteins CHD4 and Brg1. This work also includes SPR data from Lorna and...