Structural and Mechanistic Enzymology
Ivan attended the Ideas to Life Conference 2019 in China to help promote the Centre for Chemical Science and its current projects. The conference was organised by the University of Auckland and UniServices. It was hosted at the University of Auckland Innovation Institute China, which is based in Hangzhou, China.
We went for lunch at the Auckland SkyCity today to celebrate with Praveen, who has recently handed in his PhD thesis, and Mark, who has handed in his BScH thesis yesterday. Well done both again!
Congratulations to Mark who has submitted his BScH Thesis today after a diet consisting mainly of coffee and Red Bull in the last few weeks. Mark joined us in February this year and he did an superb job during his BScH. He has already co-authored one publication, and he is currently writing a review. Hopefully he will be able to write up the main findings for his BScH project soon as well. Well done Mark!
Congratulations to Oi Wei for her new paper published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (impact factor 4.183). This paper was part of the “Molecular Chaperones 2.0” edited by Professor Hideaki Itoh of Akita University in Japan. In this paper, Oi Wei reports her work in the discovery of new isoform-selective ligands of Hsp90 by virtual screening and binding assays. This work was conducted in collaboration with Dr Jóhannes Reynisson, now at Keele University. Thanks also to Raina for her contribution to this project.
Congratulations to Praveen, who submitted his Thesis last week for examination. Praveen worked in three different groups (A/Prof. Duncan McGillivray as main supervisor, and Professor Penny Brothers and Ivan as co-supervisors) and two different projects (SAXS to study protein conformational change, and dynamic nanomaterials) during his PhD. Praveen overcame many obstacles during his PhD and he did very well in completing his difficult projects. Praveen is a joint-first author for a review article 0n the use of NMR spectroscopy to study 2OG oxygenases in 2017, and he also co-authored a recent article on the production of ribosomal proteins. We are hoping to publish Praveen’s PhD work very soon.
Congratulations to Jinal and Raina for co-authoring a new paper published in Molecules (impact factor: 3.060) – “New Hydrazinothiazole Derivatives of Usnic Acid as Potent Tdp1 Inhibitors”
This work is led by collaborators (Professor Konstantin P. Volcho) from Novosibirsk, Russia, and in collaboration with Dr Jóhannes Reynisson & his group.
Congratulations everyone for our new paper in Nature Communications, in which we describe our work investigating the structure and function of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isocitrate lyase 2 (ICL2).
Check out our structures 6EDW, 6EDZ and 6EE1.
Thanks for the great effort and a lot of hard work from Ram, Wanting, Brooke, Jóhannes, Annabelle, Jon and Ghader. Thanks also to our funders – The University of Auckland and the Maurice and Phyllis Paykel Trust for funding.
Congratulations to Dr Danilo Correddu for successfully defended his thesis in the oral examination this afternoon.
Danilo performed well in his oral examination. He gave a clear presentation summarising his PhD work, and had some good discussions with the examiner and HoD nominee about his projects.
I think the examiners appreciated the difficulty of Danilo’s PhD work. In my opinion I think Danilo has excelled in his work and his PhD is well-deserved.
Congratulations!
Finally, I would like to thank the examiners (Associate Professor Heung-Chin Cheng and Dr Emilio Parisini), HoD nominee (Dr Viji Sarojini), independent chair (Dr Wei Yu), and staff at the School of Graduate Studies for their help.
Congratulations to Danilo for his latest publication in IUBMB Life, which reports our work on studying the effect of consecutive rare codons in translation and recombinant protein production. This work was initiated from Danilo as part of his PhD studies. Thanks everyone who has contributed to this work, including José, Martin and Leo (University of Auckland mass spectrometry staff) and our collaborator Dr S. Andreas Angermayr from Cologne in Germany.
You can read the paper by following the link here.
Oi Wei is attending the annual Queenstown Research Week conference, which is being held in Queenstown this week. Here are some photos live from the South Island!
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