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Reposted by Yu Heng Lau

Andrew Deans @genomestability.bsky.social · Jun 11

💥🛟Wow cyclic peptides are cool! So excited to share a new publication on "Potent Cyclic Peptide Inhibitors Disrupt the FANCM–RMI Interaction". Work led by @yuhenglau.bsky.social to which we contributed structures and ideas. The top hits mimic native MM2...but in reverse! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Potent Cyclic Peptide Inhibitors Disrupt the FANCM–RMI Interaction

FANCM–RMI is a protein–protein interaction that maintains genome stability during DNA repair events in cancers that rely on the Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres (ALT) pathway for survival. We repo...

pubs.acs.org

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Mar 31

Our paper on in vitro assembly and packaging of encapsulin protein cages is now accepted in @angewandtechemie.bsky.social 🥳

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Congrats @taylorszyszka.bsky.social for leading the charge, along with all our team members and collaborators

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Mar 20

We're hiring!🚨Our lab is looking for two new postdocs for our drug discovery program:

1) Synthetic/Med Chem (small molecule hit-to-lead)🧪
usyd.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/USYD_E...
2) Chemical Biology (peptide inhibitors)🦠
usyd.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/USYD_E...

Pls spread the word!🙏

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Reposted by Yu Heng Lau

ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology @arccoesb.bsky.social · Feb 27

🎉👏 Congratulations to Associate Investigator, A/Prof Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social from our #USyd node on receiving an #NHMRC Investigator Grant!

He has been awarded $1.6 million for his project "Developing targeted therapies for gliomas by peptide-assisted fragment optimisation." 🧠💊

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Reposted by Yu Heng Lau

Vittorio Saggiomo @vsaggiomo.bsky.social · Feb 14

Maybe with all that is going on in the states no one noticed, but in the Netherlands the university of Twente has fired 46 people from the chem department. One of them is Jeroen Cornelissen. A giant in the field #chemsky www.utoday.nl/news/75215/p...

Professor Jeroen Cornelissen: 'It could have been more humane'

Professor Jeroen Cornelissen was employed by the UT for no less than 16 years. Until last Monday. His entire department will disappear as of 1 June. His particular concern: what about the students and...

www.utoday.nl

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Reposted by Yu Heng Lau

Lorne Proteins @lorneproteins.bsky.social · Feb 11

Light-ning Talks #LorneProteins2025 Taylor Szyszka Engineering carbon-fixing protein cages. Carboxysomes are great, but encapsulins can assemble a uniform cage around any target tagged with a cargo peptide at C term. 42 nm across. Carboxysome mimic with encapsulin? Encapsulating rubisco.

Taylor N Szyszka standing behind a lectern giving a cool talk about building encapsulated rubisco complexes.

Co-expressed with encapsulin - no activity. But is rubisco assembled? Staged induction expression system. 2 plasmids; IPTG for rubisco; rhamnose for encapsulin with fresh media.

Staged expression retains activity.

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Reposted by Yu Heng Lau

Tom Ellis @proftomellis.bsky.social · Feb 6

Amazing work from Farren Isaacs team at Yale - reducing E.coli's genetic code down to only using a single stop codon. A 62 codon GRO with lots of potential for applications. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Engineering a genomically recoded organism with one stop codon - Nature

Ochre, a strain of Escherichia coli engineered to have a single stop codon, enables reassignment of four codons for non-degenerate functions, such as incorporation of non-standard amino acids into pro...

www.nature.com

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Feb 5

We have PhD scholarships @sydneyuni.bsky.social School of Chemistry available to work on a range of drug discovery and chemical biology projects in my lab, applications close Feb 21

Please let any potentially interested candidates know!

www.sydney.edu.au/scholarships...

Postgraduate Research Scholarship in Medicinal Chemistry

www.sydney.edu.au

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Feb 3

He certainly does, so good that he's giving two this week!

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Feb 3

Don't worry @drmikebooth.bsky.social, no left-handed helices were spotted

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Feb 3

Big crowd to see Prof Sir Shankar Balasubramanian give the 2025 Cornforth Lecture @sydneyuni.bsky.social School of Chemistry.

Very happy for all the students who have seen his science in my undergraduate lectures... They finally get to see him now in action for real! 🧬

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Reposted by Yu Heng Lau

Joost Snijder @joostsnijder.bsky.social · Dec 16

The Physical Virology meeting is back! now under the EMBO|FEBS umbrella. Very excited to go, happy to be part of it. meetings.embo.org/event/25-phy...

Physical Virology: across length scales

Our preparedness against viral diseases and our ability to exploit viral structures to advance technology, both require multidisciplinary collaborations. In this context, physics-oriented approaches …

meetings.embo.org

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Dec 16

Looking forward to this!
meetings.embo.org/event/25-phy...

Roger Castells @rcastellsg.bsky.social · Dec 16

Registration is open for the Physical Virology: across length scales (EMBO|FEBS Lecture Course), happening from June 1-6, 2025, in beautiful Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain! 🌍🔬 #Virology #EMBO #FEBS

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Reposted by Yu Heng Lau

Lorne Proteins @lorneproteins.bsky.social · Dec 11

Three more days left for Early Bird Registration for the Lorne Protein Conference 2025!
www.lorneproteins.org

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Reposted by Yu Heng Lau

Rezwan Siddiquee @rezwansiddiquee.bsky.social · Dec 6

Had such a wonderful time at #Coesb2024! Got to meet like minded synthetic biologists and learn about their successes and challenges. And huge thanks to @ARC_CoESB for an award for Outreach Excellence!

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Dec 3

Oh you're here, excellent!

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Nov 28

This work has been many years in the making... I recall seeing it in its early days during joint group meetings we used to have pre-pandemic

Wonderful to see it competed, major congrats especially to Minh for driving this work!

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Nov 28

And one of the many news stories about it
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Nano-scale dinosaur made by Australian researchers from DNA building blocks

Structures thousands of times narrower than a human hair suggest future uses for nanobot technology

www.theguardian.com

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Nov 28

Shouting out some super cool work by my good friend and Chemistry colleague Shelley Wickham and her amazing team @sydneyuni.bsky.social #chemsky

DNA origami voxels configured into anything 🦕🇦🇺 you name it, even 3D or dynamic, they'll build it

Out in Science Robotics
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Reconfigurable nanomaterials folded from multicomponent chains of DNA origami voxels

Custom nanostructures joined into flexible chains rapidly transform into programmable nanorobotic components with high yield.

www.science.org

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Nov 27

Thanks Jon, we were genuinely surprised to see how well it did work!

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Reposted by Yu Heng Lau

Dr Taylor Szyszka @taylorszyszka.bsky.social · Nov 27

My first ever Bluesky post is a new #preprint alert! What if we could put *anything* into a protein cage? Our new in vitro encapsulin assembly system is esay to use and enables the pacakging of protein and synthetic cargo!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

High-fidelity in vitro packaging of diverse synthetic cargo into encapsulin protein cages

Cargo-filled protein cages are powerful tools in biotechnology with demonstrated potential as catalytic nanoreactors and vehicles for targeted drug delivery. While endogenous biomolecules can be packa...

www.biorxiv.org

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Nov 26

Thanks! We have put a bunch of different proteins of different sizes into them but I don't think an upper limit has been experimentally determined

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Reposted by Yu Heng Lau

Lorne Proteins @lorneproteins.bsky.social · Nov 25

As Lorne Protein Meeting approaches its 50th anniversary we’re excited to welcome the fantastic speakers coming in 2025 to celebrate.
www.lorneproteins.org/speakers2025

Invited Speakers — Lorne Proteins 2025

www.lorneproteins.org

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Reposted by Yu Heng Lau

Rezwan Siddiquee @rezwansiddiquee.bsky.social · Nov 26

Very excited to share our new pre-print! We’ve developed a new way to put any type of cargo (biological or synthetic) into protein cages! All in-vitro! This enables massively scalable in vitro packaging technology for multiple lucrative applications. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

High-fidelity in vitro packaging of diverse synthetic cargo into encapsulin protein cages

Cargo-filled protein cages are powerful tools in biotechnology with demonstrated potential as catalytic nanoreactors and vehicles for targeted drug delivery. While endogenous biomolecules can be packa...

www.biorxiv.org

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Yu Heng Lau @yuhenglau.bsky.social · Nov 26

Finally, going to cross-post this with the old place and see how engagement compares 📊

Maintaining multiple socials is time consuming... hope we can just go ahead and make the switch! 🤞

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