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Older News
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Martin's office is on Level 8 of the Astbury Building.
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Welcome to Martin Parker, who has recently taken
up an appointment as a University Research Fellow. Martin's group (PhD student Geraint Thomas and RA Marc Aulton-Jones)
is focussed on computational and experimental studies of protein folding.
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| Leeds now houses one of the largest Virology groups in the
UK and the third Leeds Virology Daywas held on
Friday 7th November. It was attended by 60 delegates - many of whom are members of the Astbury Centre.
The event was organised by Julian Hiscox and
Nicola Stonehouse and was made possible by the generous
support given by Helena Biosciences, Invitrogen, Replizyme and Sigma. |
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Jenny Gilmartin has taken on a
new role within the Faculty of Biological Sciences and has now ceased acting as administrative assitant within Astbury.
Jenny has made outstanding contributions to the work of the Centre over the last few years.
We will miss her but wish her well in her new role! |
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To celebrate our Wellcome Trust PhD programme, a dinner was held
on October 6th for students and supervisors in University House. The meal was followed by a lively general knowledge
quiz. Many thanks to Alan Berry for organising the evening! |
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Congratulations to us!
Members of the Centre are heavily involved in the
Wellcome Trust 4 year PhD programme and we are happy to announce that the application to extend the programme
has been successful, to the tune of 5 students per year for the next 5 years. The panel was very impressed with the
management of our programme, its interdisciplinary nature and the quality of our students. |
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And Congratulations...
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to Steve Griffin of the
Harris group on winning the Young Microbiologist of the
Year Award. The competition was held at the Society for General Microbiology meeting in September and this is the
second year runninmg that a member of the gruoip has won the award. Last year it was presented to Andrew
Macdonald. |
The event was also attended by Kevin Plaxco from UCSB
(pictured centre in the white T shirt), who was visiting Sheena Radford's lab. |
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Congratulations to...
Stephen Lane, from the Phillips group, who had his PhD
viva on June 30th |
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The 4th annual
NESBIC symposium was held in Leeds on June 27th. The programme included a series of excellent presentations
followed by a lively poster session, where the following prizes were awarded:
First Prize of £50 from GlaxoSmithKline to
Mr Stephen Muench, Sheffield
'Novel insights into the design of antimalarial agents from the structure of Plasmodium falciparum enoyl
reductase'
3 runner up prizes of £20 each to:
Dr Michael Sherrett, Manchester
'Determining Young's modulus for an isolated supra-molecular assembly'
Ms Rhoda Hawkins, Dept Physics & Astronomy, Leeds
'A simple model of entropic allostery'
Ms Nicoletta Kokkoni, UMIST
'Structural studies on N-methylated derivatives of Alzheimer's Aß (25-35) by solution-state NMR' |
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The new JIF Centre for Biomolecular
Interactions is on Level 9 of the Astbury
Building...
9.105 Computer Cluster, Don Akrigg x37272
9.106 Surfact Plasmon Resonance, Andy Baron x37271 & 37278
9.107 Mass Spectrometry, Alison Ashcroft x37273 & 37275
9.108 Main lab (HPLC, amino acid analysis, protein purification, oligonucleotide synthesis,
peptide synthesis) Chris Adams x37279, 37276 and Andrea Coates x37276 & 37278
9.108 Analytical Ultracentrifuge, Andy Baron x37276, 37278
9.108 Stopped flow calorimetry, ChrisAdams & Andy Baron x37277
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Welcome to two new
post-doctoral fellows...
Mark Robinson, in the Stonehouse Group and Gabriel Uguru
working with Kenny McDowall and Simon Baumberg.
The Stonehouse and McDowall groups have now moved into newly
redecorated labspace, shared with the Baumberg group. They can be found in 10.17 on Level 10 of the Manton Building
(tel: 33089 or 33106). |
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Peter Stockley and Simon
Phillips have co-authored an article in the April issue of The Biochemist,
celebrating 50 years of the double helix. The article highlights advances
since the first X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA were taken by W.T.
Astbury in Leeds in 1928.
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After many years at the
University working with Peter Stockley, Nic Stonehouse and Alastair Smith,
Hugo Lago leaves next week to take up a post
in the Scripps Institute, San Diego, USA.
The place won't be the same
without him!
More
pictures
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| The 2003 Royal
Society Bakerian Lecture was held in Leeds on 13th March. Chris
Dobson gave an superb account of his work on Protein Folding and
Misfolding and also spend time with students and post-docs from the faculty
at a poster session. |
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Congratulations to
Alastair
Smith and Kenny
McDowall on promotion to Reader and Senior Research Fellow respectively.
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| The 2003 Structural
Biology Evening was held on 13th February. An excellent programme
of talks was followed by a wine and posters reception, sponsored by Biochemistry
and Molecular Biology. |
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Scientific session chaired by
Sheena Radford
Yulia Redko - Determinants
of RNA cleavage by E.coli RNase E, the key enzyme of RNA decay
Gavin Williams -
Directed evolution of aldolases
Ferenc Marincs -
Microarray analyses of gene expression in E.coli
Caitriona Dennis
- Biophysical analysis on HIV-1 Nef
Bruce Turnbull -
Dissecting the cholera toxin-ganglioside GM1 interaction by ITC
David Brockwell -
Characterisation of mechanical resistance in proteins using AFM
Peter Stockley -
Concluding remarks
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Congratulations...
to Stan Burgess, Matt Walker
and Peter Knight
on their paper on Dynein in Nature.
Not only is the paper outstanding, but it is also featured on the cover
of the February 13th issue.
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Welcome...
to Bill Ashraf who has recently
joined Sheena
Radford's lab following the award of a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship.
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Congratulations...
...to
Andrew Macdonald of the Harris
group on winning the Promega Young Microbiologist of the Year Award and
a cheque for £600. The competition was held at the Society for General
Microbiology meeting on September 17th.
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Members of the Astbury Centre
enjoyed celebrations to mark the official retirement of Professor David
Cove from the Chair of Genetics here in Leeds. A symposium in honour of
David's retirement 'From Aspergillus to Physcomitrella and beyond' was
held on September 17th, followed by a dinner at the Royal Armories. A
good time was had by all, although we have no photographic evidence at
the present time!
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Adam
Nelson has been honoured with the 2002 Pfizer academic award. It
is awarded annually to young European medics, biologists or chemists,
and comes with a £12k contribution towards the award holder's research.
It
was awarded to Adam for
"the first desymmetrisation of a centrosymmetric molecule in natural
product synthesis and for elegant use of two-directional synthetic strategies".
These tactics are both ways that improve the synthetic efficiency by exploiting
the hidden symmetry of target molecules.
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Congratulations...
...to
Adam Nelson
and Simon Phillips
who have both been honoured with awards from the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Simon
has been presented with the Award for Peptides and Proteins sponsored
by
AstraZeneca. Adam was awarded the Meldola medal for the best independent
research by an organic or inorganic chemist under 30 for his work on stereochemistry
and bioactive
natural product synthesis.
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The
third annual NESBIC symposium...
was held in Sheffield on July 2nd. The meeting
was attended by particiants from Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield as well
as Julia Goodfellow from the BBSRC, who presented cash prizes for the
best poster. This went to Christine Hilcenko with Chi Trinh and David
Smith collecting a runner-up prize.
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A
Symposium to celebrate the work of Professor Peter Knowles...
was held in the Astbury
Centre on April 22nd
Before the Symposium, the
invited international speakers enjoyed a weekend in the Dales!
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Congratulations...
...to Andy Capaldi and
Sheena Radford on their paper on the folding of Im7, published in the
March issue of Nature Structural Biology.
Following Steph Capaldi's
successful PhD viva last month, Andy and Steph have now moved to San Francisco.
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National
Science Week - two honored guests!
The University was visited
by Prof Lord Robert Winston and Dr
Tim Hunt FRS. Prof Winston was invited by the Union Biochemistry
Society. He gave a lecture entitled 'Laundering Genes - is genetic science
bad for us?' on Monday 11th March and also attended the Society's Annual
Dinner.
Dr Tim Hunt FRS,
Nobel laureate officially opened the New Garstang Teaching Laboratories
on March 13th and presented an entertaining seminar, describing his experiments
on the cell cycle that led to the award of a Nobel Prize last year.
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Welcome...
to Richard M. Jackson - new Lecturer in Bioinformatics |
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Welcome...
to the new Astbury postgraduate students!
Some of 24 new students are pictured above
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| The first Structural Biology
Evening ...research talks followed by posters and wine... was held on September
20th |
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Congratulations...
Jo
Jäger and Janice Pata were married on August 18th at Janice's home in
Stoney Creek, Conneticut
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The University of Leeds
hosted a lecture by the 2001 Feldberg Foundation award winner, Prof
Wolfgang Baumeister, Director of the Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry,
in Martinsried, Germany. As part of the award, the winner presents up
to 3 lectures in UK Universities of his choice, so we are delighted he
has chosen Leeds.
His lecture was on Tuesday
16th October, entitled The 26S proteasome: a molecular
machine designed for controlled proteolysis.
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Congratulations...
Steph Fonseca and Andy
Capaldi of the Stonehouse and Radford groups respectively, who were married
in August in London.
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Hepatitis
C virus polymerase is featured in the Leeds
Reporter - focusing on the work of Joe Jäger's and Dave Rowlands'
groups.
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Congratulations
to...
Wilf Horn for winning the
runner up prize at the British Crystallography Meeting for his poster
'Structural determination of an RNA translational operator incorporating
2'-deoxy-2-aminopurine complexed with bacteriophage MS2 coat protein'.
Wilf's prize was presented
by Siân Rowsell.
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New
Head of the Astbury Centre...
Peter Stockley
is the new Director
of the Centre, with Steve Homans as Deputy. Simon Phillips has become
the new Dean for Research in the Faculty of Biological Sciences.
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New
£8 million Centre for Biomolecular Interactions!
Members of the Astbury
Centre have been successful with a £8 million bid for a new centre that
will establish Leeds as one of the world's leading players in the exciting
scientific areas of understanding the "book of life" represented by the
human genome sequence.
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Opening
of Protein Chemistry Facility
The official opening of
the JREI-funded Protein Chemistry Facility was
held on Monday 15th January. For more information, see the Facilities
pages.
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