2008 Public Lecture Series

2008-01-01T12:00:00Z

Previous lectures

High-hanging fruit worth the risk –Seeing the atoms in human membrane proteins

	Professor So Iwata Imperial College‚ London
	Thursday 18th September 2008 - 6.30pm The University of Melbourne School of Physics Laby Theatre
	Professor So Iwata is currently the David Blow Professor of Biophysics at Imperial College‚ London and Professor of the Graduate School of Medicine‚ Kyoto University‚ Japan. The results of various genome projects have shown that up to 30% of human proteins occur in cell membranes. Membrane proteins play crucial roles in biology and disease. Over 50% of drugs target membrane proteins. In spite of the abundance and importance of membrane proteins there are only 150 unique membrane protein structures known. To address the bottlenecks preventing the ability to see the structure of membrane proteins‚ Professor Iwata has recently started the “ERATO human receptor crystallography project” supported by the Japanese Science and Technology Agency and the Wellcome Trust. He is setting-up a facility at the new synchrotron in the UK‚ Diamond. In this talk he will explain how we will see human membrane proteins at the level of single atoms using these new facilities. He will also discuss the impact of this work on the biological sciences‚ pharmacology and medicine.

Avian Influenza and the emergence of Influenza Pandemics

	Dr Jose N Varghese CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies
	Tuesday 29th April 2008 - 6.00pm The University of Melbourne McCoy-Fritz Leowe Theatre
	Dr Varghese is a world renowned scientist having solved the structure of influenza neuraminidase with Dr Peter Colman at CSIRO in 1983‚ was involved in the development of RelenzaTM‚ the first structure based anti-viral drug designed. Since then he has worked on the structural basis of drug resistance to neuraminidase inhibitors and has carried out seminal studies on the design of drugs against rapidly mutating targets. He was involved determining the structures of several medically important protein structures and is currently working on Alzheimer\'s Disease and brain receptor structures in the CSIRO P-health Flagship. Jose is also a key participant in the Australian Synchrotron Project‚ leading the design and construction of two Protein Crystallography beamlines and is a member in the ARC Centre of Excellence in Coherent X-ray Science. Jose will discuss Influenza drug resistance studies and where we stand on the verge of a potential new pandemic arising from the virulent Avian strains that are now emerging worldwide.

Structures in a Flash!

X-ray Lasers‚ Exploding Molecules and Biological Insights
Professor Janos Hajdu

Was held on Friday‚ 8th February 2008‚ at The University of Melbourne‚ Sidney Myer Asia Centre‚ Carrillo Gantner Theatre.

Professor Janos Hajdu holds a professorship in Molecular Biophysics at Uppsala University‚ Sweden and another in Photon Science at Stanford University‚ USA.

He is world-renowned for his studies in structural biology and is now exploring new avenues for studies of single biological molecules at atomic resolution using coherent X-rays. His research is seminal in developing the theory‚ approach and instrumentation that will enable the use of the world\'s first X-ray free electron laser (the Linac Coherent Light Source)‚ which is being built at Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre (SLAC) for these
experiments.

CXS - Education - 2008 Public Lecture Series

2008 Public Lecture Series

Previous lectures

High-hanging fruit worth the risk –Seeing the atoms in human membrane proteins

Avian Influenza and the emergence of Influenza Pandemics

Structures in a Flash!