Leung Group 
Congratulations to Mark-Anthony McLarin – His new review article on PPO substrate specificity was published in the journal “Critical Reviews in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology” today. Mark wrote a detailed review examining the various factors that govern whether PPO may accept monophenols and/or diphenols as substrates. The review was largely based on Mark’s introduction chapter … Read more
Congratulations to Jinal who has submitted her PhD thesis for examination today. Jinal joined us 3.5 years ago and her PhD work has focussed on the studies of a DNA-repair enzyme called TDP1. Jinal’s project is central to a very successful collaboration with Professor Konstantin Volcho (N.N. Vorozhtsov Novosibirsk Institute of Organic Chemistry of the … Read more
Congratulations to Dr Oi Wei Mak for successfully defended her thesis in her PhD oral examination this afternoon. The oral examination was conducted online via Zoom due to the coronavirus outbreak. Despite the unusual and difficult circumstances, Oi Wei performed well in her oral examination. I think the examiners appreciated the diversity of Oi Wei’s … Read more
It was a privilege to give the weekly SCS seminar (and on Zoom for the first time) this morning. Many thanks to the amazing students of our Group – spending long hours in the lab collecting and analysing data. Thanks also to our collaborators and to our support staff. Finally, thanks to the audience for … Read more
Congratulations to Dona, who submitted her PhD Thesis for examination today. Dona spent 4.5 years in the group, initially as a BScH student and later on as a PhD. Dona is very enthusiastic about her science, and she did an excellent job investigating the ethylene-forming enzyme from both structural and mechanistic perspectives. Thank you very … Read more
Oi Wei is attending the 45th Lorne Conference on Protein Structure and Function, which is currently being held in Lorne, Australia. She also managed to catch up with one of our former members, Dr Ram Bhusal, at the conference. Hope you are enjoying the conference with good science and networking!
The Group went to Cornwall Park today for a barbecue. This is also an opportunity to say goodbye to Oi Wei. Oi Wei joined us three years ago in January 2017 as a University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarship student. She was supervised by Dr Jóhannes Reynisson (formerly the University of Auckland) and Ivan. She worked on … Read more
Congratulations to Oi Wei, who submitted her PhD thesis for examination today. Oi Wei joined the group in January 2017 as a University of Auckland Doctoral Scholar. She did several projects that are related to different aspects of drug discovery during her PhD. Oi Wei has successfully developed and mastered a very wide range of … Read more
Congratulations to Dr Yu Li for her new co-authored paper that was published in the journal Foods today (impact factor: 3.011). Dr Yu Li contributed to this work by performing NMR analyses to quantify active components in Manuka honey yogurts. This work was led by Anand Mohan and his supervisor Associate Professor Siew-Young Quek and … Read more
We are very excited that Danilo’s paper in IUBMB Life – “Effect of consecutive rare codons on the recombinant production of human proteins in Escherichia coli” – has been selected by the Editors to feature as a short highlight at the front of the latest issue. Danilo has also very recently started his postdoc in … Read more
Simran graduated with a First Class MSc degree in absentia at the University of Auckland Spring Graduation earlier in September. She just sent us this photo of herself with the certificate. Simran is currently pursuing her PhD degree at the laboratory of Dr Wei Shen Aik at the Hong Kong Baptist University. Well done and … Read more
Thank you Professor Konstantin P. Volcho and his colleagues at the N.N. Vorozhtsov Novosibirsk Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences for including us in this very productive project on TDP1. Congratulations to Jinal and Raina for their contributions towards this new co-authored paper in IJMS. Hopefully we will … Read more
Thank you to Dr Yoselin Benitez-Alfonso of the University of Leeds for including us in their successful application of a World Universities Network (WUN) Research Development Fund. We look forward to connecting and networking with colleagues from around the world to study the impact of global warming on food security.
We are delighted for the support of a project grant-in-aid from the Maurice and Phyllis Paykel Trust to help our effort in developing novel molecules to tackle the global antibiotic resistance crisis. This is a joint project with colleagues at the University of Auckland (A/Prof. Chris Squire and Dr Viji Sarojini) and Auckland University of … Read more
Congratulations to Nabangshu. His co-authored paper on PC-PLC was published today in the European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (impact factor: 4.816). This work was led by Dr Jóhannes Reynisson of Keele University (and formerly at the University of Auckland), and in close collaboration with Associate Professor David Barker at the School of Chemical Sciences and … Read more
Ivan attended the 12th Australian and New Zealand Society for Magnetic Resonance conference (ANZMAG 2019), which was held in Bunker Bay in Western Australia. Ivan was part of the scientific committee and co-chaired the Drug Development session (with Dr Lorna Wilkinson-White of the University of Sydney). It was an excellent NMR conference that is organised … Read more
Ivan attended the Ideas to Life Conference 2019 in China to help promote the Centre for Chemical Science and its current projects. The conference was organised by the University of Auckland and UniServices. It was hosted at the University of Auckland Innovation Institute China, which is based in Hangzhou, China.
We went for lunch at the Auckland SkyCity today to celebrate with Praveen, who has recently handed in his PhD thesis, and Mark, who has handed in his BScH thesis yesterday. Well done both again!
Congratulations to Mark who has submitted his BScH Thesis today after a diet consisting mainly of coffee and Red Bull in the last few weeks. Mark joined us in February this year and he did an superb job during his BScH. He has already co-authored one publication, and he is currently writing a review. Hopefully … Read more
Congratulations to Oi Wei for her new paper published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (impact factor 4.183). This paper was part of the “Molecular Chaperones 2.0” edited by Professor Hideaki Itoh of Akita University in Japan. In this paper, Oi Wei reports her work in the discovery of new isoform-selective ligands of Hsp90 by … Read more