The Dunkle Group attended the 2022 edition of the Southeast Enzyme Conference on the campus of Georgia State University in Atlanta. Sarah, Danielle and Johnny presented posters on recent research and Sarah took home a prize for her poster: Identifying the tolerance of CRISPR-Cas10 to mismatches in the crRNA-target duplex.
Pictured above, are the University of Alabama attendees including members of the Frantom, Thompson, Dunkle and Higgens groups. Erythromycin resistance methyltransferase (Erm) enzymes are a clinically important mechanism of multi-drug antibiotic resistance rendering bacteria resistant to macrolide, lincosamide and ketolide antibiotics. Whether or not all Erm enzymes bind to their rRNA substrate in a similar manner is an outstanding question. A new publication from the Dunkle group titled "Shared requirements for key residues in the antibiotic resistance enzymes ErmC and ErmE suggest a common mode of RNA recognition" appeared in the December 18 edition of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The article demonstrates that similar conserved residues in ErmC or ErmE are required for function by deploying in vivo and in vitro assays on a collection of site-directed mutants. Also a structural model for how Erm enzymes bind rRNA is presented.
Caroline Yuk, an undergraduate researcher in the Dunkle group and UA Neuroscience major, is one of the 2020 recipients of the Marshall Scholarship. Caroline was among the 46 U.S. students chosen in 2020 and will complete two years of graduate studies in the United Kingdom working toward her goal of becoming a medical researcher. Link to the UA press release.
A recent research article from the Dunkle group 'Structural evidence for dimer-interface driven regulation of the type II cysteine desulfurase, SufS' was listed among the most cited mechanistic enzymology articles appearing in the journal Biochemistry (published by the American Chemical Society) in 2019. Here's the link. Research on the Suf pathway for iron-sulfur cluster biogenesis is performed in collaboration with the Frantom group at the University of Alabama and the Outten group at the University of South Carolina.
Jack presented a seminar to the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Ohio State University on the group's recent CRISPR-Cas10 research and toured the beautiful campus.
Mohamed gave an oral presentation at the Gordon Research Symposium on his recent CRISPR-Cas10 research and we both were able to hike beautiful western Maine.
Mohamed was chosen to give an oral presentation at the 2019 SEC meeting in Atlanta. He presented results from his recent publication in RNA on the synthesis and regulation of cyclic oligoadenylates by Cas10. Sebastian and Josh presented a poster of recent work on erythromycin resistance methyltransferases and Michael presented a poster of his recent publication in Biochemistry. Congratulations to all. You earned that Waffle House breakfast.
Georgette Munezero and Athina Aminor of Spring Hill College are performing summer research on erythromycin resistance methyltransferase structure and mechanism with the Dunkle Research Group.
Jack attended RNA 2018, the annual meeting of the RNA Society at the University of California at Berkeley to present a poster, co-authored by Sebastian, Rachel and Josh on the Dunkle Research Group's erythromycin resistance methyltransferase research.
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