News

Karrera recently provided comments to the Australian media regarding the antibacterial potency of copper surfaces via “contact killing”. The article is here. For more information about metallic copper as an antibacterial surface, read this review by Grass, Rensing, and Solioz.

Karrera’s profile in the Metallomics Emerging Investigators issue is now live! Very pleased to be highlighted alongside our close collaborator Dr Kevin Waldron (Newcastle University) and 15 other international early-career principal investigators in Metals in Biology.

Andrew Turner’s (UQ) last paper from his PhD has now been published in Biochemical Journal. Congratulations, Andrew, as well as the Walker and McEwan labs in Australia!

After an international search and a selection process involving around 100 applicants, our international PhD Studentship for the development of cell-permeable copper carriers (see here for details) has now been filled. We are very much looking forward to welcoming Atreyee Mishra from India to join us in February 2019. Atreyee will be jointly supervised by Dr James Walton from Durham Chemistry.

We’re very pleased to have received a Wellcome Trust Seed Award to work on metal-dependent host effectors of nutritional immunity. This also means that we’re recruiting for a new member! Stay tuned for details.

We ended a brilliant first year with hot cocoa and cake at Vennels’ Cafe in Durham, and the first official Djoko Lab Secret Santa! Very grateful for 2018 and looking forward to 2019. Happy holidays to all!

We are involved in one successful Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant application, entitled “Molecular Mechanisms of Novel Bacterial Copper Defense Proteins”.

This project is led by Prof. Jenny Martin (Griffith University) and collaborators Dr Begoña Heras (LaTrobe University), Dr Makrina Totsika (Queensland University of Technology), Dr Roisin McMahon (Griffith Univeristy), and Dr David Drew (Stockholm University).

We are very much looking forward to working together with the team on this project!

We are looking for a new team member to study the biochemistry and microbiology of copper ions!

The 4-year PhD studentship is funded by the BBSRC Newcastle-Liverpool-Durham Doctoral Training Partnership. The student will be based in the Djoko Lab in Durham Biosciences but will also spend time in Dr Kevin Waldron’s lab in Newcastle University. The project also involves collaborators in University of East Anglia and in Australia. The studentship also funds a 3-month placement of the student’s choosing outside academia and training courses in biosciences research skills.

If this sounds interesting, please contact Karrera (email: karrera.djoko at durham.ac.uk) with informal inquiries. The project description can be found by clicking this link on FindAPhD.com.

Sam started recently in the lab as a PhD student, funded by the BBSRC Doctoral Training Partnership. Sam obtained her Master’s degree from Newcastle University, where she investigated the biochemical properties of a bacterial Cu storage protein (in Dr Kevin Waldron’s group). She will now study the mechanisms of Cu handling in pathogenic Neisseria.

Congratulations to our MBiol student Jack Bolton for winning the Durham Biophysical Sciences Institute Poster Prize today!