News

Researchers in Biological Sciences at Birkbeck, in collaboration with a group at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, have determined the structure of a protein assembly used by the immune system to kill unwanted cells. The immune system uses cytotoxic T lymphocytes and natural killer cells to act as executioners when it detects the
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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
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Transcription is carried out by evolutionary conserved RNA polymerases and subject to regulation by different strategies. The control of individual genes is enabled by a plethora of DNA-binding transcription factors that respond to changes in the environment and enable the up- or downregulation gene expression; the structural basis and mechanisms of genespecific regulation has been
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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.

Two ISMB members - Dr Amandine Marechal and Dr Altin Sula – were invited to present talks at this year’s British Crystallographic Association (virtual) Meeting on 1 April (no foolin’). Amandine Marechal gave the Keynote Lecture, ‘Respiratory supercomplexes: what can we learn from yeast?’, in the Biological Structures group Membrane Proteins Session (chaired by Professor Bonnie Wallace),
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Dec 2020: Postdoctoral EMBO fellowships awarded to ISMB postdoc Sander Van der Verren and former ISMB PhD student Joshua Hutchings. ISMB’s Sander Van der Verren has been awarded a prestigious and highly competitive EMBO fellowship to work at ISMB in Giulia Zanetti’s laboratory. The fellowship will support structural studies of the human COPII coat complex and its
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https://www.ismb.lon.ac.uk/research-fellowship-applications/

The Microbiology Society Outreach Prize 2020 was awarded for the charity project ‘Joi Hok’, which uses educational intervention as a means of spreading awareness of tuberculosis. Professor Sanjib Bhakta, Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Biochemistry at the ISMB and ‘Joi Hok!’ founder Sreyashi Basu have been awarded the 2020 Microbiology Outreach Prize by the Microbiology Society, for
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