Hello lab scribbles readers!

I have been busy in the lab making lots of protein for some upcoming electron microscopy experiments – all materials and methods can be found on Zenodo. These proteins are the complete full-length human huntingtin protein with either 23, 46 or 78 glutamine amino acids in the polyQ repeat stretch representing the polyQ repeats of the general population, HD patients and juvenile HD patients respectively. All of these protein samples are made from the DNA constructs very kindly provided by Ihn Sik Seong.

I have also been busy planning electron microscopy experiments which would allow us to image the protein molecules and hopefully give us a better understandin of what they look like! This work I am completing with Susan Lea who has a lab at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. I have shipped the protein samples I made to Susan and am excited to get started on this work.

I will also be giving a public talk in Toronto on my open lab notebook so come along if you would like to hear more about that and Huntington’s disease.

Looking forward to updating you on the microscopy work soon, fingers crossed it all goes well!