News

Many congratulations and hoorays to our MBiol student Jack, who has been awarded a highly competitive BBSRC DTP Studentship to stay on in the lab as a PhD student come October! Jack will be studying copper trafficking to enzymes that are involved in denitrification and microaerobic respiration.

Karrera visited Dr Louise Horsfall at the University of Edinburgh and delivered a seminar at the School of Biological Sciences about copper homeostasis in bacteria. She also met with Dr Edward Wallace. It was a fantastic visit with plenty of interesting discussions about metals!

Our review article about the handling of nutrient copper in the bacterial envelope has been highlighted as a Metallomics HOT Article in 2019. This themed collection features articles marked as HOT by the handling editor or as recommended by referees. Congratulations, Louisa and Denis!

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!