We are delighted to invite you to Professor Kostas Thalassinos’s inaugural lecture, “My Time of Flight – From Genes to Proteins via Mass Spectrometry”, on Thursday 8th June at 5pm in the J Z Young Lecture Theatre (UCL Anatomy Building, Gower Street), followed by a drinks reception.
Tickets are free and everyone is welcome but please sign up via the Eventbrite link so we can know numbers for catering.
There will be a special seminar by Professor David Eliezer from the Weill Cornell Medicine School, New York. The title of his seminar is “IDP membrane interactions in neuronal function and dysfunction”.
This Friday, 2nd June, at 2pm there will be a joint visit from the single-molecule technology company Lumicks and Professor Ben van Houten from the University of Pittsburgh. Professor van Houten will give a talk titled ‘Observing DNA Repair Proteins – Protecting our Genomes from Cancer: From Cells to Single Molecules’ and Lumicks will showcase the applications of their optical tweezers single-molecule technology.
The event will be held in the Darwin Building, Room B15.
Anyone interested is welcome. If you would like to attend, please could you contact g.king@ucl.ac.uk.
In recognition for his outstanding contributions to science, ISMB member Professor David Jones (UCL Computer Science) has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society. Full article here.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2021 has been awarded to German Benjamin List and British David MacMillan. Prof Stefan Howorka from the ISMB at UCL Chemistry explains: ‘The two researchers have developed a new class of catalysts that are inspired by Nature. Enzymes are widely used in biology as they initiate and specifically control biochemical reactions to achieve the desired stereochemistry while limiting the creation of undesirable by-products. Reconstructing these catalytic functions with smaller and cheaper synthetic units is of considerable scientific and industrial interest. Ideally, synthetic catalysts should also avoid precious metals such as platinum which are not environmentally friendly. List and MacMillan succeeded independently of each other in developing efficient biomimetic and “green” catalysts. In the late 1990s, List wondered whether amino acids found in the enzymes’ active site would also be able to achieve part of the same catalytic role if added in isolation. As proof-of-principle, List tested the catalytic properties of proline and related compounds in an aldol reaction. The specific question was whether the use of a chiral proline would control the stereochemical outcome of the reaction. Indeed, the chirality of the catalyst controlled which enantiomer of the aldol products was formed. MacMillan was working in the same field. MacMillan was motivated to develop new catalysts that avoid the widely used metals. Rather, he focused on environmentally harmless and inexpensive organic frameworks that contain -in addition to carbon- oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur or phosphorous. Similar to List, MacMillan also tested chiral versions of his organic catalysts but with a different reaction, the Diels-Alder cycloaddition. The reaction was successful as enantiopure products formed depending on the chirality of the catalysts. Reflecting the catalysts’ composition and enantioselective control, MacMillan coined the term ‘asymmetric organocatalysis’ This new field has grown dramatically and develops simple, easy-to-manufacture and environmentally friendly catalyst. This has a huge impact in science and industry to produce new pharmaceuticals or molecules that can capture light in solar cells. This year’s Nobel prize and the Nobel prize given in 2018 for ‘the directed evolution of enzymes’ underscore the importance of developing new catalytic tools, Prof Howorka concludes.
References: J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2000, 122, 2395-2396; J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2000, 122, 4243-4244
The Wallace Group has recently received a 3-year grant from the Rosetrees
Trust for work on: ‘“Seeing” General Anaesthetics Bound to Sodium
Channels: Using Novel Structure/Function Information for Molecular
Understanding and Design, Enabling Improved Function and Safety’ – a
collaboration with Professor Hugh Hemmings’ Lab at the Weill Cornell Medical
Centre in New York.
A one day Symposium celebrating the research of the ISMB’s current postgraduate students will take place on Monday 15 June 2020.
Full details are available here.
Professor Steven Perkins (Professor of Structural Biochemistry, UCL) made the front cover of October’s Biochemical Journal (vol. 476, issue 19) with his latest paper:
A joint project with UCL Medicine and the University of Bedfordshire, it is a combination of work done on Professor Perkins’ new analytical ultracentrifuge, protein crystallography and recombinant proteins.
Citation: Lau, A. M., Zahid, H., Gor, J., Perkins, S. J., Coker, A. R. & McDermott, L. C. (2019) Crystal structure of zinc-α2-glycoprotein in complex with a fatty acid reveals multiple different modes of lipid binding. Biochem. J. 476, 2815-2834.
Work from Dr Anthony Roberts’s laboratory in the ISMB, in collaboration with Dr Andrew Carter’s group at the MRC-LMB in Cambridge, has determined the cryo-EM structure of the motor protein dynein-2, which transports cargoes and signalling molecules within cilia and flagella. Dynein-2 is fundamental to human development and its dysfunction is associated with short-rib thoracic dysplasias with or without polydactyly; inherited disorders characterised by abnormal rib cage development with severe, often life-threatening, consequences.
The Roberts group was recently awarded a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship to further their studies on the mechanism of transport within cilia and flagella.
Dr Giulia Zanetti’s research group has been awarded two new grants.
A European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant was awarded for a project which shows how coat assembly can deliver the flexibility necessary to accommodate a wide variety of cargo proteins, and how the process can be regulated. Her focus is on COPII coat, which mediates export from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of about a third of newly synthesized proteins. The aim of the project is to understand the molecular interactions between coat components and understand their role in determination of coat architecture and membrane shape.
A Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) grant was awarded for another project whose overall objective is to dissect the molecular mechanisms involved in COPII coat budding, and in particular to assess the dynamic regulation of the various levels of coat assembly and its role in flexible membrane remodelling.
Further details of Dr Zanetti’s research can be found on her lab website.
