Newsletter Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

www.med.monash.edu.au/biochem

NEWS AND EVENTS

The Clive and Vera Ramaciotti Centre for Structural Cryo-Electron Microscopy

Issue 18: November 2011

Prof James Whisstock, Prof Ian Smith and Assoc Prof Mike Lawrence (WEHI) will head Victoria’s first cryo-electron microscopy centre, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Melbourne, La Trobe University, Burnet Institute and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute. The centre will be built on the Monash Clayton Campus, providing researchers with local access to technology that Prof Whisstock says “will allow researchers to create powerful images of nature’s tiny machines, in order to develop therapeutics for diseases such as cancer, diabetes and immune disorders.”

Some of the research already scheduled to take place at the centre includes looking at how unwanted immune activity can cause disease, how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, how certain cell signalling events drive the development of cancer, and how transport systems move protein and other cargoes across cell membranes.

Image courtesy: Nic Long

Photo taken at the Ramaciotti Biomedical Research Awards dinner Prof Ian Smith (4th from left) and Prof James Whisstock (7th from left)

Brendan Wilding

3rd Year Oral Presentations: 1st - Brendan Wilding 2nd - Olga Ilyichova 3rd - Benjamin Lang

Ben Lang

Main Prize Winners2011 Biochemistry Postgraduate Student Conference

1st/2nd Year Poster 1st - Michelle Audsley 2nd - Greg Davis

3rd/4th Year Poster 1st - Nisha Antony 2nd Tia DiTommaso

Tia DiTommasoNisha AntonyGreg Davis

POSTGRADUATE MATTERS PhD Graduates

Khatira Anwari Thesis: “Omp85 family proteins and the BAM complex in Caulobacter crescentus” Supervisor: Trevor Lithgow

Colleen Elizabeth D’Arcy Thesis: “Investigation of muscular dystrophy and the possible therapeutic effect of FHL1” Supervisor: Christina Mitchell

Renee Charlene Duncan Thesis: “The molecular mechanisms of the interaction between complement proteases and substrates” Supervisor: Rob Pike

Rebecca Elsie Fitzpatrick Thesis: “Functional analysis of the gingipains from Porphyromonas gingivalis and their role in periodontal disease” Supervisor: Rob Pike

David James Hawkes Thesis: “The role of cellular lipids in HIV-1 replication” Supervisor: Johnson Mak

When: Saturday, 17 December 2011

Where: Huntingdale Golf Club Windsor Avenue, South Oakleigh

Time: 7:00pm for 7:30pm Start

Biochem 2011 Christmas Dinner

Page 2Department of Biochemistry and Molecular BiologyNewsletter: November 2011, Issue 18

LAB HEAD BIO: PROF JAMES WHISSTOCK

The first few months passed in a flash – I rented a flat, made new friends, bought a dodgy car, went to my first Lorne conference, discovered the joys of the Notting Hill Pub and sat in front of my fancy new SGI computer (which would now be outstripped in power by an iPhone) and looked at structures. Mostly, however, I talked to people, a lot of people, sometimes about science and crystal structures. Unlike in Cambridge, where structural biologists were two-a-penny, no-one at Monash really seemed focused on my flavour of structural and computational biology – and it seemed that everyone wanted a chat. The Department presented a giant opportunity for collaboration and, while it was taking time for me to get my own science set up, many people in Biochemistry generously involved me in their projects. At the time I had no grant money and no students or staff to supervise, so this meant I could focus on doing the computational work myself. In addition, not having a direct “boss” to report to about what I was up to essentially permitted total freedom to do what I wanted. I got very comfortable flipping between completely different structures and topics, depending on who I was meeting with that day. From a personal perspective this was an enormously important time.

Cambridge was shrouded under a miserable cloud of drizzle and freezing fog. I had just returned from London clutching a passport that finally had my Australian permanent residency visa in it. This was it - I was flying out in three weeks! Out of habit I paused in the porter’s lodge – only one message hung on the St Catharine’s College noticeboard – “James Whisstock - Urgent - ring Australia”. Before I could wonder why, Ed, the College porter, appeared, unusually grim faced. He broke the news that Stuart Stone, who earlier in the year had offered me my first postdoctoral appointment as a Monash Research Fellow, had suddenly died.

I can’t really remember the following few days too well – shock, grief, phone calls, meetings and sage/not-so-sage advice swirled around me. One conversation, to Barry Preston, stood out “We want you still to come James, we’ll look after you – and anyway we’ve spent a bloody fortune on your computer!”

So, on the 7th January 1997 I arrived in Australia on a blisteringly hot 40°C day.

Continued next page

To tell the truth, though, the best part of moving to Monash and developing new collaborations was that I met Michelle Dunstone - she had just finished Honours and she popped in my office one day to look at the structure of F1-ATPase. I rapidly decided that the structure was probably best discussed at the Nott over a few beers. Life from then on was pretty perfect – I had a new job and a girlfriend who was interested in protein structure – what more could I want! Thirteen years on we now have a house and our two fantastic children, Charlotte and Claire.

In 1998 I also started working with James Irving, who would go on to be my first PhD student. With James, we finally completed what I regarded as a “magnum opus” around understanding the evolution of the serpin superfamily. The paper was published in Genome Research and I’m incredibly chuffed that it continues to be cited to this day. We worked day and night to finish the work – somehow I couldn’t sleep properly unless I was doing something to move the paper forward. Near the end of the writing process I remember Michelle sitting on the floor of our little one-bedroom apartment surrounded by piles of paper and endlessly proofing the final drafts. I had read it so many times I just couldn’t see the mistakes any more (and in any case Michelle is much better than me at proofing things). A sidenote here – it’s always worth persuading someone else to read important things with fresh eyes. Anyway, it turned out that all the fretting and nights spent working on it were worthwhile - a few months after our paper was published a related piece of work came out from a competing group. We had almost been scooped – and there are no prizes for coming second.

I was incredibly fortunate in that I was part of the “protease” team that Stuart had assembled. Steve Bottomley and Rob Pike had come to Australia from Cambridge, both as academic members of staff. As the first year developed it became rapidly apparent to all of us that survival of the “wet lab” side of things was on a knife edge – time was flying by, money was short and while Steve and Rob were able to keep some of Stuarts grant funding, never had the phrase “publish or perish” had so much resonance. One paper from that time really stands out for me to this day. The work was led by Steve and was accepted in JBC in early 1999. Ellie James, Steve’s honours student, was first author. To us, getting that paper accepted felt like getting a Nature paper – we had actually published something in the fabled Journal of Biological Chemistry. In 1999 I also won my first fellowship – an NHMRC Peter Doherty training award – I had money and I could stay in Australia. Rock and Roll!

Many amazing people became my mentors and helped me in the early years. Chris Mitchell joined the department as our head in 1998 and rapidly drummed into me some of the essential aspects of scientific life. These included: Is it good enough to get into JBC?, only write a grant on something you actually want to do, and don’t get angry when writing grant rebuttals. One of Chris’ first recruitment successes was to attract Phil Bird to the Department. Phil brought complementary molecular cell biology to our growing band of serpin and protease biologists. Together Phil, Steve, Rob and I formed a great team.

Chris also introduced me to Michael Berndt from the Baker Institute (at the time). My collaboration and friendship with Michael and Ian Smith (also based at the Baker Institute at that time) continues to this day. For a young scientist I cannot emphasise enough how important proper mentorship is to developing a career in science. Chris, Ian and Michael in particular helped me establish national and international linkages as well as guiding me though many a tricky situation.

Once I had my training fellowship and papers were beginning to come out, life seemed a bit more secure. I then won an NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship and some NHMRC and ARC grants. The fellowship interview was a surreal experience. The panel clearly had reservations about international recognition of my research and went on the attack. Fortunately, the day before my interview I had received my first invitation to an international meeting – the Serpins conference in Chicago and so at least I had some response to their probing. Looking back on it I think that invite probably swung the panel in my favour.

Page 3Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

PROF JAMES WHISSTOCK continuedWith funding, suddenly it was time to build my group! From my time in Cambridge I knew that actually physically doing wet biochemistry was not exactly my thing. However, I knew I needed to develop a lab group so that I could address some of the questions that the computational work was throwing up. In a great stroke of good fortune Ruby Law agreed to join my group. Ruby is a spectacularly talented scientist and makes an enormous contribution to science and in leading my lab team. A major decision for any scientist “starting out” is the balance between “bread and butter projects” and higher risk directions. It was with Ruby that the lab over the years developed the ability and confidence to address larger and higher-risk problems. It is with great pride that I am now able to support Ruby in her own research pursuits as well.

Science is really about never giving up. Its great when experiments work out, but most of the time they don’t. I’m incredibly fortunate that I work with a group of people who don’t give up. A nice example of this for me was the structure of the first Membrane Attack Complex / perforin-like (MACPF) protein, which we published in Science in 2007. In humans, perforin-like proteins form pores and are key weapons deployed by the immune system. Our work on understanding the structure of the MACPF fold represented the culmination of a ten-year odyssey that Michelle started in her PhD and that I had joined. For most of those ten years we spent a long time mournfully discussing the results of yet another failed experiment/strategy/idea. At long last Carlos Rosado finally got soluble protein and crystals. Progress from then on was extraordinary and it wasn’t long before the day came where we saw electron density for an elusive perforin-like protein. Perforin and its friends were finally going to reveal their secrets!

We had our first baby, Charlotte, at the same time as Plu-MACPF was solved, and she (generally) cheerfully gurgled away as Michele and I stared at the structure. One greatly under appreciated thing about science is the impact on family life. I’m not very good at getting the work/family balance right and I owe so much to Michelle for the incredible support that she has given me over the years.

The work on how perforin-like proteins function and form pores presented a very new and different scientific direction. Little was known about how these proteins worked, and the opportunity to delve into a field where most of the questions lay outside my traditional comfort area of “proteases and their inhibitors” proved scarily irresistible. I also suddenly realised that I was getting a bit stale and our “big break” had come not a moment too soon. Michelle and I are now being taken on a roller-coaster ride by several rather enigmatic members of the MACPF superfamily. It’s a hell of a lot of fun!

Newsletter: November 2011, Issue 18

NOTDRS Golf NightBoth pros and amateurs are welcome to the NOTDRS golf night!

Pitch and Putt is an easy 3-par golf course, so anyone is invited to try it out. Clubs and golf balls will be provided, and we’ll have a barbecue going as well. Drinks will be available at bar prices. There have also been unconfirmed rumors that Tiger Woods will be there practicing his swing.

The cost of this great golfing event is just $5. This includes the barbecue and clubs/golf balls, as well as a fantastic opportunity to have a good time.

Location: Pitch and Putt Waverley, Cnr Wellington and Garnett Road, MulgraveTime: 5pm Register: min.yap@monash.edu

Necessary Outlets for Tertiary Doctoral Research Students

To find out more about NOTDRS please visit: http://www.med.monash.edu.au/biochem/student-society.html

Or find us on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?id=695417331&gv=12#/group.php?gid=86877543416

Page 4Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

QUICK OVERVIEW OF WHAT TO DO WHEN AN EMERGENCY ARISES:

1. Remain CALM…

2. Yell out for a First Aider (don’t go looking for one yourself, get someone else to go looking)

3. First Aiders: Read MSDS before treating any chemical injury

4. First Aiders: Call Med Centre if necessary ext. 53175

5. First Aiders: Call the Safety Officer and/or Safety Representative as soon as possible

OHS MATTERSMessage from Irene Hatzinisiriou, Deptl Safety Officer, Deptl Radiation Officer

On behalf of Rob Pike, Gavin Higgins and myself, we would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone in the Department for complying with the Monash OHS Safety code of regulations for this year of 2011. The Department Safety and Deputy Safety Officers recently completed an extensive set of lab inspections and were pleasantly surprised that we are all maintaining a level of safety which complies with the Victorian Work Safe OHS legislation.

From the inspection results, there are still a few areas which we need to improve on. These may seem minor but they are the key areas that the external auditors will immediately notice upon entering our labs. These are listed below. As you scroll down the points, chemical segregation is the one that we have not yet completed, although some labs have started the process with my guidance. The legislation does state that Hazardous Substances and Dangerous Goods and Scheduled Poisons should be segregated. In most cases this will only involve the regrouping of your chemicals according to their chemical classification using the Chemwatch database accessible through the Monash OHS web site.

As daunting as this may seem, those labs that have started to segregate their chemicals have done so with minimal lab input and time. I have been talking to most lab groups during their group meetings on how to go about the process as quickly and painlessly as possible. We are striving to complete the Corrosives, Flammables and Fume-hood segregating BEFORE the Christmas break! We are almost there!

As Safety and Deputy Safety Officers, it is our task to inform you of your legal obligation to maintain a safe working environment according to the Victorian OHS Legislation. We are here on hand to help you with any such matters, so feel free to email or call us for any matters concerning your safety in the lab and office!

In general, these are the unacceptable items we found in most areas when going through the labs:

(we also looked in cupboards, shelves, under benches, fridges, freezers, cool rooms, dark rooms, microscope rooms, animal rooms - as these too are not exempt from the eyes of the Inspectors!)

• 80% v/v Ethanol squirt bottles not visible on most benches.

• Found lots of unlabelled bottles filled with unknown substances.

• Overflowing biohazard waste bins.

• Cytotoxic waste bins lined with bags (Purple cytotoxic waste bins should not be lined, as this waste should not be double handled).

• Chemicals left on the floor or in wire rack holders whether empty or full (including bleach, dishwasher powder). These should be placed in tubs.

• 1Lt or larger bottles placed on shelves above shoulder height (can only have 500ml bottles or less on top shelf or above shoulder height).

• Scheduled Poisons not locked.

• Chemical segregation not completed yet.

WHAT YOU CAN OR CAN’T DO OVER THE XMAS BREAK IN YOUR LAB - KEEPING YOU SAFE AT ALL TIMES!

Over the Xmas break, those who wish to continue with their lab work can do so but only upon the approval of their Supervisors. Be sure to let your supervisor know you wish to be in the lab areas over the break. Most lab procedures can be carried out while you are ‘alone’ yet other procedures require the presence of First Aiders, Radiation Officer and/or Safety personnel.

Procedures such as “Using Radioisotopes” is strongly discouraged during the break period as there are no specialised personnel on hand if an emergency was to arise. If unsure whether the work you wish to carry out over Xmas is safe to do on your own, feel free to contact the Safety or Deputy Safety Officers for advice.

Newsletter: November 2011, Issue 18

Page 5Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

SPOTLIGHT ON: Dr Florian Wiede

BackgroundAfter completing a Pharmacy degree at the University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany in 2001, I went on to undertake a Dr.rer.nat (german PhD equivalent) under the supervision of Dr. Heinrich Körner and Prof. Thomas Winkler at the newly formed Nikolaus-Fiebiger Center for Molecular Medicine in Erlangen. The project was about the role of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) in lympho-proliferative disorders and its implications in autoimmune disease. Coming from a pharmacy background, where the main focus is on inorganic and organic chemistry (at least at most of the German Universities), I found it very exciting and challenging at that time to make the switch to in vivo studies using mice to gain an understanding of the immune system. After I completed my PhD in 2005, I followed my PhD supervisor Dr. Körner to Townsville in North Queensland at James Cook University (JCU). I continued to work on my PhD project and I also started investigating the physiological role of the chemokine receptor 6 on B cells. After two years at JCU it was time to move on and I was lucky enough to get a post doctoral position offered by Prof. Tony Tiganis at Monash University in Melbourne.

ProjectsTony and his group had just published an article in Nature Immunology showing how the T cell protein tyrosine phosphatase (TCPTP) regulates TNF signaling by dephosphorylating src-family protein tyrosine kinases (PTK). They also found in this study using human Jurkat T cells and murine thymocytes that TCPTP might be directly involved in the regulation of T cell receptor (TCR) signaling. However there were some complications, since mice that are globally deficient for TCPTP show a

strong inflammatory phenotype and die at an early age, which makes it impossible to study peripheral T cell responses in more detail. My task was to do a complete characterization of the newly generated TCPTP T cell specific knock-out mouse. In these mice only CD4+ and CD8+ T cells are deficient for TCPTP, which makes it a perfect model to study T cell intrinsic responses in vivo and ex vivo.

The most important finding we made in this study was that already at a young age TCPTP T cell specific knock-out mice surprisingly exhibited a pronounced effector/memory T cell phenotype. This T cell subset hardly exists in young mice when kept in a germ-free environment and usually only appears when the immune system is exposed to pathogens or under lymphopenic conditions as a result of low-affinity self-antigen/TCR recognition. When we aged TCPTP T cell specific knock-out mice these effector/memory T cells ended up accumulating predominantly in non-lymphoid organs such as lung and liver causing severe tissue damage that resulted in liver fibrosis, elevated serum liver enzymes and the appearance of auto-nuclear antibodies. The signs of inflammation and the onset of autoimmunity were even more evident when we transferred and expanded T cells from aged TCPTP T cell specific knock-out mice in lymphopenic wild type mice. To test the hypothesis that TCPTP directly regulates TCR signaling in naïve T cells, we crossed our mice onto a TCR transgenic background, where the whole T cell pool is specific for just one particular peptide. We then challenged wild type mice that had received T cells from TCR transgenic mice with peptides of different affinities for the transgenic TCR. We found that T cells from TCPTP deficient mice showed a stronger proliferative response compared to the wild type control, in particular when we used low-affinity peptides. On the biochemical level we were able to identify the src family kinase member lck, which is the most proximal kinase to the T cell receptor, as one potential substrate of TCPTP in T cells.

Our findings highlight the role of TCPTP as a key negative regulator of TCR signaling in naïve T cells and show the importance of TCPTP in the prevention of autoimmune disease and inflammation by attenuating TCR instigated signalling and responses to low-affinity antigens. It also will give clues

on how some autoimmune disorders in humans might be ultimately triggered. It has been shown that patients with Type I diabetes or Crohn’s disease exhibit single nucleotide polymorphisms in the ptpn2 gene (the encoding locus for TCPTP) that lead to gain of function mutations which in turn lead to protein instabilities. Our group will now try to elucidate how these autoimmune disorders develop using murine disease models for Type I diabetes and Crohn’s disease. These and many other projects are available in our lab and students who are keen to get themselves involved in the T cell project are more than welcome to apply. Our lab has and will be actively collaborating with Prof. Dale Godfrey, A/Prof. Stephen Turner (both Melbourne University) and Dr. Sarah Russell (Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre), in order to achieve our goals. I wish to thank these people for all their help and support over the past four years. But in particular I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Tony Tiganis, who provided me with an exciting project and great mentorship over the years. His passion for science and perseverance made it possible that our work has been recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Clinical Investigation and hopefully many more follow up articles will come out of this project. We also attended this years’ Europhosphatases meeting in Vienna, where we presented our most recent results. Tony gave an excellent talk, which was very well received and on top of it our group won the prize for the best poster.

The current research team on the T Cell Project:

Supervisor: Prof Tony Tiganis Postdoctoral Fellow: Dr Florian Wiede Research Assistant: Kelly Chew

For further Biochemistry news,

please visit our website:

www.med.monash.edu.au/biochem

Newsletter: November 2011, Issue 18

Page 6Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

1 Alcock, F., C.T. Webb, P. Dolezal, V. Hewitt, M. Shingu-Vasquez, V.A. Likic, A. Traven, and T. Lithgow, A Small Tim Homohexamer in the Relict Mitochondrion of Cryptosporidium. Mol Biol Evol, 2011. E-pub: p. 1-10

2 Allwood, E.M., R.J. Devenish, M. Prescott, B. Adler, and J.D. Boyce, Strategies for Intracellular Survival of Burkholderia pseudomallei. Front Microbiol, 2011. 2: p. 1-19

3 Bottomley, S.P., The structural diversity in alpha(1)-antitrypsin misfolding. EMBO Rep, 2011. 12(10): p. 983-984

4Chan, J.C., K.M. Hannan, K. Riddell, P.Y. Ng, A. Peck, R.S. Lee, S. Hung, M.V. Astle, M. Bywater, M. Wall, G. Poortinga, K. Jastrzebski, K.E. Sheppard, B.A. Hemmings, M.N. Hall, R.W. Johnstone, G.A. McArthur, R.D. Hannan, and R.B. Pearson, AKT promotes rRNA synthesis and cooperates with c-MYC to stimulate ribosome biogenesis in cancer. Sci Signal, 2011. 4(188): p. ra56.1-11

5 Devenish, R.J., EDITORIAL: Autophagy and the evasion of host defense: A new variation on the theme for Burkholderia cepacia? Autophagy, 2011. 7(11)

6don Paul, C., D.A.K. Traore, E. Byres, J. Rossjohn, R.J. Devenish, C. Kiss, A. Bradbury, M.C. Wilce, and M. Prescott, Expression, purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray analysis of eCGP123, an extremely stable monomeric green fluorescent protein with reversible photoswitching properties. ACTA Crystall F, 2011. F67: p. 1266-1268

7Gray, L., J. Sterjovski, P.A. Ramsland, M.J. Churchill, and P.R. Gorry, Conformational alterations in the CD4 binding cavity of HIV-1 gp120 influencing gp120-CD4 interactions and fusogenicity of HIV-1 envelopes derived from brain and other tissues. Retrovirology, 2011. 8: p. 42.1-9

8 Hyun, J.K., C. Accurso, M. Hijnen, P. Schult, A. Pettikiriarachchi, A.K. Mitra, and F. Coulibaly, Membrane remodeling by the double-barrel scaffolding protein of poxvirus. PLoS Pathog, 2011. 7(9): p. e1002239.1-14

9 Lee, R.S., C.M. House, B.E. Cristiano, R.D. Hannan, R.B. Pearson, and K.M. Hannan, Relative Expression Levels Rather Than Specific Activity Plays the Major Role in Determining In Vivo AKT Isoform Substrate Specificity. Enzyme Res, 2011. 2011: p. 720985.1-18

10 Plasman, K., P. Van Damme, D. Kaiserman, F. Impens, K. Demeyer, K. Helsens, M. Goethals, P.I. Bird, J. Vandekerckhove, and K. Gevaert, Probing the efficiency of proteolytic events by positional proteomics. Mol Cell Proteomics, 2011. 10(2): p. M110.003301-1-10

11 Prescott, M., Editorial - Autophagy - Recycling for a Healthy Lifestyle. Aust Biochemist, 2011. 42(2): p. 3-4

12 Mijaljica, D., C.J. Rosado, R.J. Devenish, and M. Prescott, Biosensors for monitoring autophagy, in Biosensors - Emerging Materials and Applications, P. Serra, Editor. 2011, InTech: Croatia. p. 383-400 Book Chapter

13Vivian, J.P., R.C. Duncan, R. Berry, G.M. O’Connor, H.H. Reid, T. Beddoe, S. Gras, P.M. Saunders, M.A. Olshina, J.M. Widjaja, C.M. Harpur, J. Lin, S.M. Maloveste, D.A. Price, B.A. Lafont, D.W. McVicar, C.S. Clements, A.G. Brooks, and J. Rossjohn, Killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor 3DL1-mediated recognition of human leukocyte antigen B. Nature, 2011. E-pub: p. 1-6

14 Bharadwaj, M., P. Illing, A. Theodossis, A.W. Purcell, J. Rossjohn, and J. McCluskey, Drug Hypersensitivity and Human Leukocyte Antigens of the Major Histocompatibility Complex. Annu Rev Pharmacol Toxicol, 2011. E-pub: p. 1-31

Newsletter: November 2011, Issue 18

Page 7Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

RECENT PUBLICATIONS continued

15 Shingu-Vazquez, M. and A. Traven, Mitochondria and fungal pathogenesis: drug tolerance, virulence and potential for antifungal therapy. Eukaryot Cell, 2011. E-pub: p. 1-38

16 Stivala, A., M. Wybrow, A. Wirth, J.C. Whisstock, and P.J. Stuckey, Automatic generation of protein structure cartoons with Pro-origami. Bioinform, 2011. E-pub: p. 1-2

17

Vissers, L.E., T.C. Cox, A.M. Maga, K.M. Short, F. Wiradjaja, I.M. Janssen, F. Jehee, D. Bertola, J. Liu, G. Yagnik, K. Sekiguchi, D. Kiyozumi, H. van Bokhoven, C. Marcelis, M.L. Cunningham, P.J. Anderson, S.A. Boyadjiev, M.R. Passos-Bueno, J.A. Veltman, I.M. Smyth, M.F. Buckley, and T. Roscioli, Heterozygous mutations of FREM1 are associated with an increased risk of isolated metopic craniosynostosis in humans and mice. PLoS Genet, 2011. 7(9): p. e1002278

18 Wang, X.-F., Z. Chen, C. Wang, R.-X. YAN, Z. Zhang, and J. Song, Predicting Residue-Residue Contacts and Helix-Helix Interactions in Transmembrane Proteins Using an Integrative Feature-Based Random Forest Approach. PLoS One, 2011. 6(10): p. e26767.1-11

19Wong, W., L.C. Wijeyewickrema, R.M. Kennan, S.B. Reeve, D.L. Steer, C. Reboul, A.I. Smith, R.N. Pike, J.I. Rood, J.C. Whisstock, and C.J. Porter, The S1 pocket of a bacterial derived subtilisin-like protease underpins effective tissue destruction. J Biol Chem, 2011. E-pub: p. 1-14

20 Yallowitz, A.R., S.M. Hrycaj, K.M. Short, I.M. Smyth, and D.M. Wellik, Hox10 genes function in kidney development in the differentiation and integration of the cortical stroma. PLoS One, 2011. 6(8): p. e23410.1-11

CONTACT US: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Monash University, Ground Floor, Building 77, Wellington Road, Clayton VIC 3800 Australia Website: www.med.monash.edu.au/biochem Tel: +61 3 990 29400 Fax: +61 3 990 29500 Content and Layout: Yvonne.Dooley@monash.edu Photography: MNHS Multimedia Services

Newsletter: November 2011, Issue 18