Madan will be giving his Francis Crick Prize Lecture 2016: “Unstructured proteins: cellular complexity and human diseases” in the Royal Society, London on 7th December 2016 at 18.30! Details of the event can be found here: https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2016/12/francis-crick-prize/
Big congratulations to Tilman to win this year’s Max Perutz Student Prize.
The Max Perutz Student Prize is awarded annually for outstanding work performed at the LMB prior to the award of a PhD. The 2015 prize has been awarded to Tilman Flock, for his comprehensive computational analysis of GTP-binding proteins (G proteins), revealing the universal nature of their interactions and activation.
Tilman, a third year PhD student in the group of Madan Babu in the Structural Studies Division, undertook a systematic analysis of over 80 structures and 950 sequences of G proteins from different species to reveal how the core mechanism of activation and recognition is conserved, even while new specific interactions evolve. In humans there are over 800 G protein-coupled receptors which, upon binding of an extracellular ligand, activate one or more of 16 different G proteins by triggering the exchange of GDP for GTP, thus initiating a series of signalling pathways. It is these receptors that allow us to smell different chemicals, respond to adrenalin, and sense neurotransmitters in the brain, amongst many other functions. More than 30% of all prescribed small molecule drugs act by stimulating or inhibiting them. Since the 1980’s, there have been over 11,000 publications relating to how G proteins work. Tilman’s elegant methodological approach unifies a vast amount of data, providing a framework for the whole field. It is a general approach that can be extended to other proteins, and it shows the power of large-scale analysis of the ever-growing mass of published data.
See Flock et al, Nature 524, 173-179 (2015).
The research student prize is awarded by the Max Perutz Fund. The Fund was established for the promotion and advancement of education and research in molecular biology and allied biomedical sciences.
Photo and text are taken from the LMB website.
Many congratulations to Madan to be awarded the prestigious the Royal Society Francis Crick Medal and Lecture 2016. Madan will deliver the prize lecture in December 2016. Here is the detailed information as shown in the LMB website. You can get more information about the Royal Society Awards Francis Crick Medal here.
Madan is presenting the 2014 Colworth Medal Lecture. The lecture will be held on Monday 1 December 2014 at Charles Darwin House, London. Click here to view details.
Congratulations to Madan to be awarded the prestigious Lister Research prize this year along with Melina Schuh, another LMB group leader. Madan’s Lister Research Prize has been awarded for his work on dynamics of tRNA abundance and the regulation of protein expression levels. He will deliver his Lister Prize Lecture at the awards ceremony on Friday 5th September 2014. Here is the detailed information as shown in the LMB website.
Congratulations to Dr. M. Madan Babu for getting the Protein Science Young Investigator Award this year. The Protein Science Young Investigator Award, named for the academic journal of the Society, recognizes an important contribution to the study of proteins by a scientist still in the early stages of an independent career.
Ben has been awarded the EMBL Interdisciplinary Postdoc (EIPOD) fellowship to work at EMBL-Heidelberg. Many congratulations to Ben!
Rob has been awarded the Marie Curie Fellowship to work between our group and that of Benjamin Blencowe’s lab in Toronto. Along with Marc Torrent and Natalia de Groot, that makes it three Marie Curie Fellows in the group. Many congratulations again Rob!
Tilman Flock has been awarded the BIF Fellowship. The Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds awards PhD fellowships to outstanding junior scientists who wish to pursue an ambitious PhD project of approximately 3 years in basic biomedical research in an internationally leading laboratory.
AJ Venkatakrishnan and Natalia de Groot have been awarded the MRC Centenary Award to pursue their research on protein structure networks and protein aggregation. Many congratulations to them!
