Structure and stability of gammaS-Crystallin sheds light on cataract formation – New paper in JMB!

Read the paper here!  Cataracts, the clouding of the eye lens, is a leading cause of blindness and visual impairments worldwide. Cataracts form when oxidative stress in the lens causes lens proteins, such as crystallin, to destabilise and aggregate. The molecular basis for the oxidation-induced aggregation of these proteins, however, has remained elusive. In thisContinue reading “Structure and stability of gammaS-Crystallin sheds light on cataract formation – New paper in JMB!”

The evolution of multiple active site configurations in a designed enzyme – New Nature Communications Paper!

  Congratulations to Nansook and everyone involved in this project! This has been a great collaboration with Lynn Kamerlin (Uppsala University), Chris Easton (ANU) and Michelle Coote’s (ANU) groups. In this work, we follow changes in conformational sampling, electrostatic preorganization, and quantum tunneling along the evolutionary trajectory of a designed Kemp eliminase. We observe thatContinue reading “The evolution of multiple active site configurations in a designed enzyme – New Nature Communications Paper!”

Postdoctoral Fellow Position in the Jackson Lab – Apply Now!

Come and work with us on an exciting, collaborative project at the Australian National University! The ANU Grand Challenge Research Program on Novel Miniaturized Medical Sensor Technology is now advertising Postdoctoral Fellow / Research Fellow positions located each in the Research Schools of Chemistry, Engineering, and Physics to work on the development of novel miniaturized biomedical sensorsContinue reading “Postdoctoral Fellow Position in the Jackson Lab – Apply Now!”

Galen hits ‘Submit’ on his PhD Thesis!

Congratulations to Galen Correy who submitted his PhD thesis last week! Here he is clicking on the ‘submit’ button. Well done Galen!   Check out a few of Galen’s papers: Correy, G., Zaidman, D., Carvalho, S., Mabbitt, P. D., James, P. J., Kotze, A. C., … Jackson, C. J. (2017). Overcoming insecticide resistance through computationalContinue reading “Galen hits ‘Submit’ on his PhD Thesis!”

Ben Clifton awarded ‘Best Thesis’

Ex-Jackson group member Dr. Ben Clifton has been awarded the ‘ANU Research School of Chemistry Director’s award for the Best Thesis 2017’. Ben’s PhD thesis ‘Functional evolution of solute-binding proteins’ describes the use of ancestral protein reconstruction to explore the molecular evolution of binding specificity and catalysis in amino-acid binding proteins. You can find someContinue reading “Ben Clifton awarded ‘Best Thesis’”

New Nature Chemical Biology paper!

  Link to paper The amino acid glycine is an important inhibitory neurotransmitter and co-agonist of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors involved in synaptic plasticity. In this work, published in Nature Chemical Biology, we describe the computational design, development, and application of the first optical sensor for glycine. This FRET sensor can be used with single andContinue reading “New Nature Chemical Biology paper!”

Modulating enzyme activity via incorporation of non-canonical amino acids – new chapter

Colin and Jules have recently published a chapter, with Thomas Huber (ANU), about using non-canonical amino acids for the modulation of enzyme activity. This chapter, published in Modern Biocatalysis: Advances Towards Synthetic Biological Systems (RSC Publishing), outlines the use of unnatural amino acids (UAAs) in protein engineering. Examples of how UAAs have successfully been used toContinue reading “Modulating enzyme activity via incorporation of non-canonical amino acids – new chapter”

New Publication! – “Hydrogel-Immobilized Supercharged Proteins”

  Immobilizing enzymes on a solid support can help improve their stability, rendering them more suitable for industrial and medical applications. However, standard covalent attachment approaches can be costly, often require many steps, and commonly lead to unfavourable orientations of the enzymes on the solid media. In this work, recently published in Advanced Biosystems, weContinue reading “New Publication! – “Hydrogel-Immobilized Supercharged Proteins””