Chemical probes for understudied kinases

One of the ongoing projects at SGC-UNC is the development of chemical probes for understudied kinases (e.g. MST1-4, TAOK1-3, DCAMKL1, MAP3K2 and MAP3K3). A chemical probe is defined as a small molecule that selectively and potently modulates a protein’s function. Generating chemical probes for understudied kinases is important so we can further understand the biology Read More …

An Introduction to developing assays for HDACs

Histone decaetylases (HDACs) are one of the several enzymes that take part in regulating gene expression. They catalyze the removal of acetyl groups from ε-N-acetylated lysines from both, histone and non-histone protein substrates. By doing this, they maintain a balance with respect to the activity of the acetyltransferases in the cells. The HDAC family consists Read More …

Project Overview: Testing polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) inhibitors in acute myeloid leukemia

Acute myeloid leukemia or AML is a type of cancer that is the result of abnormal division and development of blood cells. AML has very poor outcomes, with 5-year survival of less than 50 percent and even less in patients over the age of 60 [1]. Within AML, there are many subgroups that can dictate Read More …

Project Overview: Role of HTT in neurological disorders

Hi everyone! As part of SGC’s Extreme Open Science program, I’m going to be giving live updates on my project on the role of HTT in neurological disorders. As this is my first blogpost, I’ll start by giving an overview of my project. The focus of my project is HTT and its role in neurological Read More …

Project Overview: Understanding Enhancer Biology in Cancer

Every cell in your body contains the exact same set of genetic instructions encoded in its genome. However, for complex multicellular organisms such as ourselves, we depend on many specialized cell types that exhibit strikingly different features. This is largely accomplished by precisely controlling how and when genetic information is read out in each cell, Read More …

Project Overview: Work towards a CLK probe

Hello everyone! This is my first post on the blog and I am going to give a brief summary of my main project as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at SGC-UNC. Protein phosphorylation is a quick and reversible mechanism with the aim to control biological functions. This mechanism involves structural conformational changes by adding a phosphate Read More …

Project overview: Understanding the pathogenic mechanism of ACVR1/ALK2 mutations

Hello world! I think I should let you know about the two diseases my project covers before we get started:  Firstly, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG for short) is a childhood brain tumour that grows in a part of the brainstem called the pons. The disease progresses rapidly and the fact that it grows within the brainstem, and invades into nearby Read More …

USP5 Zf-UBD FP Assay Development

For the past few days, I have been working on optimizing a fluorescence polarization (FP) displacement assay for USP5 Zf-UBD. This assay will be used to test if small molecules can displace a fluorescence-labelled ubiquitin peptide from USP5. I started with screening different assay conditions with a small set of buffers. The method and data Read More …