E-news
September 2020

This race isn't between countries, it's human vs virus.

James Whisstock
EMBL Australia Scientific Head

As the world continues to grapple with the devastation wreaked by the coronavirus pandemic, vaccines to reduce our susceptibility to infection are widely seen as the best hope for a return to some semblance of a pre-coronavirus normal.

The rapid progress of vaccines on this front has been remarkable, with many vaccines using different modalities currently in development (and the subject of much speculation in the press on an almost daily basis!). We were fortunate to speak to Professor Ewan Birney, who is not only the Deputy Director General of EMBL and Director of EMBL-EBI, but also one of the thousands of volunteers participating in the ‘Oxford trial’ for a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. As well as discussing lessons learnt from the European experience, Prof Birney shares his view on the challenges still ahead and the unique role international science organisations like EMBL play in these circumstances. You can read the full interview below.

Many of our group leaders are continuing their work into SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, with the Gambin Group following fascinating new leads (which include comparing the immune response of humans and bats to understand how bats can tolerate coronavirus) and Professor David Lynn building upon the promising results seen in the BRACE trial and recruiting participants at overseas sites.

But, as the world waits for a vaccine to protect against SARS-CoV-2 or treatment for COVID-19, the funding environment for scientists to pursue this critical fundamental research grows increasingly more competitive and the problems with Australia’s research-funding model become ever more apparent.

In this context, we give our heartiest congratulations to our group leaders who have recently secured grants to continue their cutting-edge research:

Dr Barry Thompson and Dr Harald Janovjak were each awarded an ARC Future Fellowship to research the genetic control of tissue growth in animals and the spatio-temporal activation of genes in cells and mice, respectively;
Associate Professor Mikaël Martino received a Stem Cell Therapies Mission grant to research the use of stem cells to treat muscle injury and wasting disorders; and
Dr Yann Gambin received a grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, allowing him to access samples from Parkinson’s disease patients and apply his team’s new single molecule technique to detect early protein aggregates in biofluids.

Finally, I’m thrilled that our annual postgraduate student symposium, EAPS, will go ahead this year in virtual form and, with a fantastic line-up of speakers, I encourage you to register your attendance.

Until next time, take care.

Perspectives on COVID-19 from the European experience

“This pandemic is a struggle between humanity and this virus, and it is only by working together that we will prevail,” says EMBL Deputy Director General Professor Ewan Birney, who is also a participant in the Oxford trial of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.

Read the interview

Keratins determine cell fate in early mammalian development

Research by EMBL Australia group leader Dr Maté Biro & his colleagues, and published in Nature, has led to a fundamental discovery that advances our understanding of how mammals develop in the earliest stages after fertilisation.

Read more

Two group leaders awarded ARC Future Fellowships

Dr Barry Thompson and Dr Harald Janovjak have been collectively awarded almost $2 million in funding for their innovative projects under the Australian Research Council’s Future Fellowships scheme.

Read more

#2020EAPS: Register for our online postgraduate symposium

An array of impressive speakers - including the 'father of cultured meat', Professor Mark Post, and infectious disease expert Professor Kanta Subbarao - will headline our first virtual postgraduate student symposium from 11-13 November.

Register now

Group leader spearheads novel method of enhancing regenerative activity

New research from A/Prof Mikaël Martino outlines a novel method of enhancing regenerative activity, which may improve the effectiveness of growth factor-based therapies, & was published in Science Advances.

Read more

Using stem cells to treat muscle injury and wasting disorders

EMBL Australia group leader A/Prof Mikaël Martino and Victorian node head Prof Peter Currie will use a grant of more than $820,000 from the Stem Cell Therapies Mission to improve the lives of those with muscular dystrophies & myopathies.

Read more

Job opportunities

Outstanding candidates for post-doc positions are encouraged to contact EMBL Australia group leaders. EMBL Australia groups offer exceptional academic and research environments, with internationally competitive salaries and career-development opportunities.

Read about our research groups

Student opportunities & upcoming events

The 2020 EMBL Australia Postgraduate Symposium (EAPS) will be held virtually from 11 - 13 November. As well as providing a platform for impressive expert speakers from a range of fields, EAPS intends to bring together the postgraduate community to share their work via poster or oral presentation in a supportive environment. Early-bird registrations and grant applications are now available.

Abstract submission for the Australian Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Society (ABACBS) 2020 conference is open now until 21 September. The virtual conference will consist of live sessions,
pre-recorded talks, workshops and other events during 23 - 27 November.

EMBL's International PhD Programme welcomes applications from prospective PhD students. Applications are open until 13 October.

A number of EMBL courses and conferences are being held virtually, providing a unique opportunity for Australian researchers to participate without the associated travel costs.

Recent publications

Loughland JR et al (Boyle, MJ). (2020) Transcriptional profiling and immunophenotyping show sustained activation of blood monocytes in subpatent Plasmodium falciparum infection. Clinical & Translational Immunology, 9(6).
DOI: 10.1002/cti2.1144.

Vijay R et al (Boyle, MJ). (2020) Infection-induced plasmablasts are a nutrient sink that impairs humoral immunity to malaria. Nature Immunology. 21:790-801.

Kaniusaite M, Goode RJA, Tailhades J, Schittenhelm RB & Cryle MJ. (2020) Exploring modular reengineering strategies to redesign the teicoplanin non-ribosomal peptide synthetase. Chemical Science,
DOI: 10.1039/D0SC03483E.

Recent publications cont.

Kaniusaite M, Kittila T, Goode RJA, Schittenhelm RB & Cryle MJ. (2020) Redesign of substrate selection in glycopeptide antibiotic biosynthesis enables effective formation of alternate peptide backbones. ACS Chemical Biology. DOI: 10.1021/acschembio.0c00435

Zhao Y, Ho YTC, Tailhades J & Cryle MJ. (2020) Understanding the glycopeptide antibiotic crosslinking cascade – in vitro approaches revealing the details of a complex biosynthesis pathway. ChemBioChem, DOI: 10.1002/cbic.202000309.

Steain M et al (Gambin Y). (2020) Varicella zoster virus encodes a viral decoy RHIM to inhibit cell death. PLoS Pathogens, 16(7):e1008473.

Kainrath S & Janovjak H. (2020) Design and Application of Light-Regulated Receptor Tyrosine Kinases. In: Niopek D. (eds) Photoswitching Proteins. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2173, pp 233-246. Humana, New York, NY.

Agus V & Janovjak H. (2020) All-Optical Miniaturized Co-culture Assay of Voltage-Gated Ca²⁺ Channels. In: Niopek D. (eds) Photoswitching Proteins. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2173, pp 247-260. Humana, New York, NY.

Nassar ZD et al. (Lynn DJ) (2020) Fatty acid oxidation is an adaptive survival pathway induced in prostate tumors by HSP90 inhibition. Mol. Cancer Res.
DOI:10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-20-0570.

Nassar ZD et al. (Lynn DJ) (2020) Human DECR1 is an androgen-repressed survival factor that protects prostate tumour cells from ferroptosis. eLife, 9:e54166.

Maruyama K et al (Martino MM). (2020) Zinc Finger Protein St18 Protects against Septic Death by Inhibiting VEGF-A from Macrophages. Cell Reports, 32(2):107906.

Morris RG, Husain KB, Budnar S & Yap AS. (2020) Anillin: The First Proofreading‐like Scaffold? BioEssays.
DOI: 10.1002/bies.202000055.

Farini, D, Cesari E, Weatheritt RJ, et al. (2020) A Dynamic Splicing Program Ensures Proper Synaptic Connections in the Developing Cerebellum. Cell Reports, 31(9):107703.

Awad MM et al. (Whisstock JC) (2020) Human Plasminogen Exacerbates Clostridioides difficile Enteric Disease and Alters the Spore Surface. Gastroenterology.
DOI: 10.1053/j.gastro.2020.06.032.

Max Cryle

Associate Professor Max Cryle is an
EMBL Australia group leader, based at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute.

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Share something about yourself most people wouldn’t know.
My favourite book is The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks. When I (used to?) travel internationally, I would read this almost every time I flew. I must have read it almost 20 times. I recommend this book to anyone, even if you’re not a sci-fi fan.

Why did you become a scientist?
I’ve always been fascinated by the natural world and understanding how things work. I actually signed up for engineering at university, but then the training day bored me, so I stumped for science instead! Nothing can compare to that feeling when you finally get to answer a question that has been bugging you for years – where else do you get to do that?

What are your scientific interests?
I am fascinated by large, complex biosynthetic enzymes. These are somehow so easy to visualise as a factory assembly line, and yet the more we learn, the further from the truth this seems! In fact, they are incredible in how they manage to just work, which actually is an advantage, as then evolving these into new pathways to make new molecules is far easier than if they were perfect little molecular factories.

Name one tool you can’t do without.
Synthetic chemistry. My work has always used chemistry to generate tools, probes and standards to explore how enzymes work. Without it, I could not do what I do!

Which unresolved question would you most like to answer?
I really want to see how a peptide is assembled by a non-ribosomal peptide synthetase. These enzymes are so flexible they’re really resistant to most structural techniques we have, so it is going to take some new approaches and a bit of out-of-the-box thinking to solve this problem.

What has been a highlight of your research career to date?
The first time (in my postdoc) I saw the density in a crystal structure for an enzyme complex that I had been working on for my entire PhD. In that moment, more than five years of work suddenly all made sense. To me, this is always a powerful reminder of just how important it is to be able to visualise the machineries of life that we work on.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
The best advice I ever got was “data is eternal, interpretation is ephemeral”. Some of the shortest papers I’ve published have mountains of supporting information, so that even if I get my analysis wrong, the work is not wasted - others can still use the data and we hopefully all move forward as a field. There's nothing worse than people publishing work that no one else can reproduce!

More about Max's research

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