Month: February 2016
CHDI Meeting in Palm Springs - Thursday: Cell Replacement Technologies and Clinical Trial Data Analysis
The first session of the final day at the CHDI meeting focused on restoring neuronal networks. Most of these methodologies focus on the once fanciful idea that damaged neurons in the brain can be replaced with healthy new ones. Work by Ali Brivanlou using embryonic stem cells (cells which may be nurtured to grow into Read More …
CHDI Meeting in Palm Springs - Wednesday: Targeted Therapies, Clinical Trials and the Scientific Method
Wednesday kicked off with a session about huntingtin lowering therapies. The talks presented a series of different methods which aim to reduce the amount of deleterious polyQ expanded huntingtin in the cell including the hot CRISPR genome editing technology as well as exploiting protein degradation system in cells. There was also an excellent poster session. Read More …
CHDI Meeting in Palm Springs - Tuesday: Huntingtin Structure Function and the htt Gene and Genome
Tuesday hosted the session most closely related to my current focus of HD research - huntingtin structural biology and structural insights into HD pathology. Frederic Sandou presented some very interesting data from his EMBO publication regarding huntingtin proteolysis in cells. The C-terminal fragments generated by cutting huntingtin appear to be toxic to cells and this Read More …
Domain mapping of full-length Q17 huntingtin - summary so far
Over the past week, I have continued to analyze the mass spectrometry (MS) data from the limited proteolysis experiment, performed on the full-length Q17 Huntingtin protein sample from Stefan Kochanek’s lab, and also assessed how this data tallies with previously published studies. To pull all of this analysis together from the past few blog posts, I Read More …
CHDI Meeting Palm Springs - Monday: Discussions and Introductions
The conference kicked off yesterday at the Parker Hotel, Palm Springs. 300 participants from a range of backgrounds, clinicians through to computational modellers, gathered to share research achievements and discuss new areas of interest in the field of HD. Following a series of updates from CHDI staff in preclinical biology and chemistry HD research as Read More …
CHDI Meeting in Palm Springs - Sunshine and Science!
I have flown to Palm Springs this week to attend the CHDI Annual Conference. Academics, clinicians and industry scientists funded or working in collaboration with the CHDI Foundation meet here every year to discuss the latest work and breakthroughs in the field of Huntington’s disease. I am looking forward to hearing updates from the latest Read More …
Literature review of huntingtin proteolysis
The cutting of huntingtin protein by enzymes in the cell into shorter fragments is linked to cellular toxicity and therefore is thought to contribute to the phenotype and symptoms of Huntington’s disease. By searching through Pubmed, I have found a number of published papers which detail the sites at which this happens in the huntingtin Read More …
Mass Spectrometry Data
Currently, I am continuing to work on the domain mapping experiments with huntingtin (HTT) protein. I hope that by working out more about the domain organisation of this protein, I will be able to infer information about its 3-dimensional structure (what does it look like?) and maybe its functions in the cell (what is it Read More …
Protein structure function
I would like to explain a bit about the experiments I am doing and their relevance to HD research. Not everyone is a protein biochemist (its a pretty niche skill set) so I hope this primer allows you to get a bit more of an idea about the kind of work I am attempting with Read More …
First installment
Over the past few weeks, I have been working on how best to disperse the scientific data I have with as many people as possible in the most effective way, as well as getting this blog up and running. I have decided to deposit all of my methods and data, in real-time, on Zenodo. This Read More …