Investigation of HAO1 co-factor loading effects on crystal form and protein activity

In my last post, I told you about my initial results soaking follow-up compounds into preformed HAO1 crystals. In order to generate more crystals (and so more structures), I purified some new protein (I’ll call it ‘batch #2’ for simplicity). However, this second batch, when crystallised, did not take up any of the soaked in Read More …

Thawing your tube of iPSCs

Good morning and how is everyone doing, enjoying that first cup of tea or coffee of the morning I hope. Myself, I am a tea person, always have been, my Irish nature, we drink it by the liter. Can’t beat a good of tea in the morning to revive oneself. And if it’s the afternoon Read More …

Huntingtin chromatin retention in PARP knock out cells

More forgotten experiments revived by my year-end report. Huntingtin chromatin retention is reduced in PARP KO cells, but in frustration over some confusing results, I overlooked this important data. Lesson: pause and look at the data before rushing on! All the details and links to Zenodo deposits can be found on the Truant lab website.

Different methods to evaluate the effects of M4K compounds on DIPG patient-derived cell lines

Background: Aside from determining the optimal numbers of DIPG cells to be seeded for viability assay, it is also important to validate that measurements using CellTiter Glo are in agreement with other methods of determining cell viability. Experimental design: I chose to compare the EC50 values of M4K2009 on HSJD-DIPG-007 when measured using different methods. Read More …

I want to work with iPSCs, what do I need to get started

Good morning and happy Monday, no, not feeling it. Yes, I agree, I hate Mondays too. I never fully understood why the day existed except to be worse then Tuesday, and don’t even get me started on Wednesdays. Anyway, I digress, I trust everyone had a lovely weekend, here in Montreal the sun was shining, Read More …

The summer notebook of a principal investigator

Hello there, Is anyone out there, can you hear me, are you still there. Oh, good you are there, hello. I have to start with a Mea Culpa, for all those wondering where Tom was, its been 3 months why isn’t he writing a new post, has he forgotten about us, well no I didn’t and I Read More …

Shockingly effective – electroporation of ribonucleoprotein complexes into DIPG cells

As soon as possible I’m hoping to use CRISPR/Cas9 genetic editing to make sets of DIPG patient cells that differ only in one gene (either with/without the whole gene or with/without mutations of interest). This will allow me to make far more accurate comparisons of behaviour between the cells in relation to specific genes or Read More …

Purification of putative huntingtin interacting proteins UBE2K, HAP1, NEDD4L

We are getting close to the midpoint of the summer and my project is well underway. With another week passed, I have more purifications to share. Again, I was attempting to purify proteins we think might interact with the huntingtin protein in neuronal cells. This time around was a little less successful than previous posts, Read More …

HDAC11 target engagement assay development in cells – CETSA

Hi Everyone, This is the first time I am going to share with you my research and I will start with the project I am currently working on, which is the development of cellular HDAC11 target engagement assay. HDAC11, the only member of class IV HDAC subfamily, was believed to be responsible for the deacetylation Read More …