Structural and Mechanistic Enzymology
Congratulations to Mike for submitting his MSc thesis today. Mike did an excellent job during his MSc, in which he worked on four different projects. He also managed to publish two papers from the work that he did during his MSc research, which is not easy. You can read about his published work here and here. Well done Mike, and we look forward to have you back for a PhD very soon!
Congratulations to Ram and Brooke! Their review on targeting the enzyme isocitrate lyase for the treatment of latent tuberculosis was published in Drug Discovery Today (I.F. 5.625). The review is co-authored with Dr Ghader Bashiri, who is from the School of Biological Sciences, and A/Prof. Jonathan Sperry, who is a co-corresponding author. You can download the paper by following the link here.
Ivan attended the BIC Chemical Biology Meeting and gave a talk on the applications of computational and biophysical tools to develop new enzyme inhibitors. The meeting was organised by the Biomolecular Interaction Centre (BIC) at the University of Canterbury to celebrate the launch of their new flagship area of Chemical Biology.
We are delighted that we have been awarded a project grant-in-aid by the Maurice and Phyllis Paykel Trust. The project will investigate new ways to treat latent tuberculosis. We thank the reviewers and the Trust Board of MPPT for their work and decision.
Congratulations to Mike! His PGDipSci project, which involved investigating the use of waterLOGSY, a ligand-observe NMR technique, to determine protein-ligand binding constant was published in Scientific Reports (I.F. 5.228). You can download the paper by following the link here.
Amy spent eight very successful weeks in our lab in January and February this year. She worked with Danilo on the expression and purification of two ribosomal proteins. Amy is a very talented summer student and a very hardworking member of the group. Well done Amy and all the best for your future studies!
There are two new faces in the photo today, including Aimee, who joined us in February as a postdoc, and Ravi, who joined us last month as a visiting student. He is going to stay in our lab for seven months. Oi Wei, who joined us in January as a PhD student, is away.
Danilo, Ram, Dona and Ivan attended the 42nd Lorne Conference on Protein Structure and Function, which was held in Lorne, Victoria, Australia between February 5th and 9th, 2017. We all gave updates of our work through poster presentations. It was an interesting and highly successful conference. Highlights (at least to Ivan) definitely include the Talks by Professors Carol Robinson, Lucia Banci and Kevin Gardner.
Ivan took over the role as Chair of the SCS Health and Safety Committee today for a period of three years. Ivan hope to work with the Committee to ensure a safe environment for staff and students to undertake their studies and research activities at the School.
Congratulations to Thomas Hanauer (TU Bergakademie Freiberg; Dr Tobias Gruber Research Group, now University of Lincoln, UK), who joined our Laboratory as a visiting student in 2015, for his new publication in Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry. The paper describes his work investigating the interactions between carboxycalixarene and methylated lysines and related compounds that he conducted in Germany and at the University of Auckland. The work was collaborated with Yu Li, Danilo Correddu, Kamel Patel (Dr Viji Sarojini Research Group) and Drs Richard Hopkinson and Akane Kawamura from the University of Oxford. You can read the publication by following this link.
Congratulations to Nawal for submitting her BScH dissertation last Friday. It was not an easy year to do a BScH project as the second semester was disrupted by the laboratory move from Grafton to the City Campus. Nawal did a good job in mastering both protein production, peptide synthesis and conducting biochemical assays using MALDI mass spectrometry. Well done and we wish you the very best of luck for the future as a teacher in Malaysia.
Here are a few pictures of the Group social this Monday to celebrate Nawal handing in her dissertation, and to celebrate the end of a productive year.
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