Day: 5 July 2019

Jul

2019

ISMB Future Perspectives Day 2019

On June 18th the ISMB held its inaugural Future Perspectives Day for
PhD students and PDRAs. The opening session (chaired by Snezana
Djordjevic) addressed the important issue of Open Access and the
changing landscape of research publications, and featured three
speakers with different perspectives on the subject: Nonia Pariente,
Chief Editor of Nature Microbiology; Catherine Sharp, Head of Open
Access Services, UCL Library Services; and Dalmeet Singh Chawla a
Freelance Science Journalist. The lunchtime session (chaired by Renos
Savva) on post-PhD skills in the jobs marketplace drew on expertise
from the business sector – Juliane Haupt from the Finian Group, Heidi
Kingdon Jones from IRBM and Mark Fisher from UCL Business. The
afternoon session (chaired by Adrian Shepherd) focused on the role of
AI and robotics in 21st century bioscience. Ted Meeds from Healthcare
Machine Learning at Microsoft gave a talk on the role of deep learning
in synthetic biology, Fane Mensah showed how Synthace is developing
software to facilitate the rapid design of high-throughput laboratory
experiments, and Romain Laine from the MRC Laboratory for Molecular
Cell Biology at UCL explained the ways in which machine learning is
transforming image processing in the context of advanced microscopy.

Dr Adrian Shepherd

Jul

2019

ISMB staff retreat 2019 at London Zoo

On a sunny day in June, just before the summer solstice, staff from the ISMB at UCL and Birkbeck had their (now) annual retreat this year at the London Zoo. In our busy lives as academics, these away-days provide us with the rare opportunity to catch up with our colleagues from across Torrington Place in a relaxed atmosphere and to make new friends!

We met at the Terrace Restaurant in the ‘Outback’, where we kick-started the day with tea and coffee, surrounded by emus and wallabies. Tabitha had expertly prepared maps that indicated our exploratory trail through the Zoo, incorporating show-and-tell and feeding times for maximum knowledge gathering and entertainment. Watching dragons, flightless birds, pigs and monkeys with moustaches and coatis – which is not pronounced like the garment (I learned that day), but rather co-ah-ti, gave people plenty to discuss over a very nice BBQ-style lunch back at the restaurant. We then had time to continue our short trip round the zoo to catch up with some more amazing animals before listening to the two science presentations by Drs Alexa Varah and Nathalie Petorelli from the Institute of Zoology about ‘The costs of herbicide resistance in UK agriculture’ and ‘Satellite remote sensing – a conservation revolution’. Despite the fact that our research at the ISMB is somewhat remote from these topics, there was great interest from the audience and lively discussions ensued. It was a brilliant day out, and I’m looking much forward to the retreat in 2020.

Tine Arnvig, UCL-ISMB

Flightless birds

Monkey with moustache

Men in blue

See-through butterfly

Jul

2019

GCRF International Capacity-Building Workshop held at Birkbeck

A GCRF (Global Challenges Research Fund) International Capacity-Building Workshop to tackle Antimicrobial Drug Resistance in tuberculosis (TB) was hosted by the ISMB-Mycobacteria Research Lab at Birkbeck on 5th July, lead by Professor Sanjib Bhakta.

Dr Clare Samson, Senior Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck, has written a blog post about the event.

Jul

2019

Paper by Professor Neil McDonald’s group featured on cover of Nature Cell Biology

A paper by Professor Neil McDonald’s research group, in collaboration with Sir Richard Treisman, has been published in Nature Cell Biology, identifying a new RPEL-family of rhoGAPs that link Rac/Cdc42 GTP loading to G-actin availability.

The paper is available here.

Jul

2019

Professor Helen Saibil’s group publish paper in Cell Reports

Professor Helen Saibil’s research group have published a paper titled ‘Two-Step Activation Mechanism of the ClpB Disaggregase for Sequential Substrate Threading by the Main ATPase Motor’ in Cell Reports in June 2019.

The paper is available here.

Jul

2019

Professor Bart Hoogenboom’s group publish paper in ACS Nano

Professor Bart Hoogenboom’s research group published a paper titled ‘Quantification of Biomolecular Dynamics inside Real and Synthetic Nuclear Pore Complexes using Time-Resolved Atomic Force Microscopy’ in ACS Nano in June 2019.

The full paper is available here.

Jul

2019

Studying protein conformation using a new cyclic ion mobility mass spectrometry (cIMMS) device

Dr Konstantinos Thalassinos

We are the first group to publish a paper on how a new cyclic ion-mobility mass-spectrometry (cIMMS) device, manufactured by Waters, can be used to probe protein structure and dynamics. In particular, the tandem ion mobility capabilities of the instrument allow us to probe in very fine detail protein unfolding pathways and for the first time to do so for co-existing and interconverting conformers. We are now using this technology to study proteins involved in protein misfolding diseases such as human amyloid islet polypeptide.

The paper is:
Eldrid, C.; Ujma, J.; Kalfas, S.; Tomczyk, N.; Giles, K.; Morris, M.; Thalassinos, K. Gas Phase Stability of Protein Ions in a Cyclic Ion Mobility Spectrometry Traveling Wave Device. Anal. Chem. 2019, 91 (12), 7554–7561 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.8b05641

A video where I and other people in the field describe the cIMMS technology:
https://vimeo.com/318178536/005117727e

The link to the Waters site:
https://www.waters.com/waters/en_US/SELECT-SERIES-Cyclic-IMS-ion-mobility-mass-spectrometer/nav.htm?cid=135021297&locale=en_PT