Eccles:Newsletter Friday November 10th 2006

Developmental Genetics Newsletter

Updates

Mike

• Is working hard towards putting in a proposal for the Cancer Center of Research Excellence together with Tony Reeves, deadline is Nov 24th.
• Reviewing papers:
  • Shujihe and Mike have recently reviewed a paper for Carcinogenesis.
  • Adele and Mike have just finished reviewing a paper for Oncogene.
  • Upcoming review to be done for Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology.
• Queenstown Molecular Biology Conference 2007.
  • Has been asked to get speakers together for a cancer molecular biology satellite meeting.
  • Do you have a favorite famous international scientist you'd like to hear speak on cancer molecular biology? forward ideas to Mike :-)
• Mike will be away Monday and Tuesday November 20th and 21st to the Auckland Cancer Society Research Center Symposium with Janice and Anthony.
• Has been marking 412 exams and a Med Labsci thesis for the department.
• Is working on getting a cell imaging system - metaxpress micro.

Cherie

• Cherie's working on the characterisation of their mouse and human cystic kidney cell lines.
• Will be attending the Membrane Protein Workshop on November 28th and 29th.
  • "Frontiers of Biology: Expression, structure and function of membrane proteins" to be held in Dunedin on the 28th-29th of November 2006
  • Free registration. The opening session will be a public lecture by Dr K. Martin Pos (Switzerland) entitled "Membrane proteins - key players waiting their turn".
  • The opening session will be at 6pm on Tuesday 28th of November in the Hutton Theatre of Otago Museum.
  • The main part of the workshop will be held in room 203 of the Commerce Building, University of Otago beginning at 9am Wednesday 29th November.
• The paper has hit the public and can be found online before paper publishing at Epub ahead of print [[1]]

Aaron

• Is working on transfection of melanoma cells and Pax3.

Shujie

• Is working on melanoma and Pax3, at the moment she is counting Pax3 and Ki67 cells and has so much work to do that she'd rather not take any more vacations!!!

Adele

• Is working hard at getting the Pax8 transeftion experiments completed.
• Is working on getting primary melanoma cell culture started from pathology samples.
• Is looking forward to another ARF, Mike Algie, coming in on November 28th to get working on a stable inducible cell line.

Will to be heading off to the 'Cancer Stem Cell and Cell Therapies' conference in Welly early next year, Friday Jan 19th, 2007.

• • The topics Include;
    • Tumor Biology and Cancer Stem Cells.
    • Cell Therapies.
    • For more info email: symposium@malaghan.org.nz

Lana

• Is looking for final mistakes in the paper and doing heaps of work on the characterisation of their mouse and human cystic kidney cell lines.

Jody

• Has heaps of transfection work to do!

Hayden

• Has some interesting immunohistochemical results related to the retention of BrdU in intestine and thymus of his mice. He's working hard to interpret these and hopes to put them in his thesis soon.

Grace

• Is cloning of PAX3 isoforms and knocking down PAX2 in renal carcinoma cells.

Nicki

• Is working hard on her Masters.
• Will be away Wednesday, Thursday, Friday next week.

Amy

• Is working hard to not kill any cells!!!

Matthew

• Has been working on PKD sheep flock pedigrees and starting on molecular work for PKHD1.
• WAVE and sequencing analysis of Pax2 exons 2 and 3.
• Has been given the majority of the 'Head Lab Technician' role so that Lana can focus on her work. Big thanks to Lana for taking this on voluntarily for so long! So any problems or concerns please send them my way : )

Robertson Lab

Has a few new people so I thought I'd give an introduction.

• Jolene is here until the end of the year and is working on yeast 2 hybrid experiments and gene screening.
• Cheng Yee is a returning summer student working on Filamin A patients.
• Phil is a post-doc working on yeast 2 hybrid experiments and TGF beta signaling pathways at the moment.

Reminders

• IBSC internal audit will be on the week of November 20th. So just a reminder about tidyness and good lab practice.
• With the holidays coming remember to:
  • Plan deliveries and ordering with the expectation of delays.
  • Book off all stat holidays and the 22, 27,28,29th of December as annual leave on the web kiosk.

Happenings

• Cherie can sing!!!! On December 8th at ~12pm in St. Pauls Cathedral you can see Cherie sing at the Southern Concert of Voices, you may even recognise the conductor ;-)
• Hayden is hoping to take his band of comedians north, to Welly for the Fringe in March, wathc this space.
• Grace has a new car (restricted licence still to come)!!! Apparently the new car is a 1989 Ford Laser, lets hope it runs as well as it's name "Mr. Happy" Suggests!!