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Varroa pesticide work hits the headlines
Unsurprisingly, there has been a significant surge in interest in Varroa mites in the last month or so, with the outbreak in NSW. This has resulted in quite a lot of publicity for our work on selective pesticides to tackle the mite, with the latest being an article on the ABC News website.
Varroa research gets a mention in Japan!
Japan's Science and Technology Agency has picked up the recent publicity around our Varroa-mite-specific pesticide project by featuring it briefly on their website. Tash will be able to read it to you!
A NuRD for all seasons…
...is the title of our new review that is going to appear in Trends in Biochem Sci very soon. A sneak preview is here. In the paper - shaped by Xavier and Jason - we ponder on the observation that multiple paralogues are observed for all members of our favourite chromatin remodelling complex - the Nucleosome Remodelling and Deacetylase (NuRD) complex. This phenomenon has been observed for other remodelling complexes too (and likely many other types of protein complex). A couple of recent papers provide data that point to NuRD assemblies that are composed of a specific paralogue combination. This paper by Dan Bauer's group is the best example - they observe that repression of the fetal...
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 – 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...
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...