WEHI Molecular Sciences special seminar hosted by Dr Nadia Kershaw

Dr Ivanhoe Leung
Senior Lecturer in Biological Chemistry in the School of Chemistry and a Group Leader at the Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute of the University of Melbourne

Structural and molecular insights into the metabolic regulation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

L7W Seminar Room

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Including Q&A Session

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is the causative agent of tuberculosis, an infectious disease that kills over a million people annually. Mtb can persist intracellularly under conditions of limited nutrient availability. We are interested in understanding, from structural and molecular perspectives, how Mtb regulates its metabolism to support its survival during infection. We focus on the junction between the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and the glyoxylate shunt, which allows Mtb to balance nutrient utilisation and conservation according to its metabolic needs. Here, we combined structural enzymology, transcriptomics and metabolomics to investigate how Mtb regulates key enzymes at this metabolic junction. Our work reveals that these enzymes are regulated by carbon metabolites that alter their catalytic activities through allosteric interactions and changes in protein conformation. Our results also suggest that the distribution of carbon flux between these two pathways is controlled by interactions between gene expression, metabolite availability and protein allostery. These findings may facilitate the development of new drugs to target this critical metabolic junction.

Dr Ivanhoe Leung is a biological chemist with research interests in enzyme regulation, structural biology and chemical biology. He leads a research group in the School of Chemistry and the Bio21 Molecular Science & Biotechnology Institute at the University of Melbourne. His research combines structural biology, biochemistry, biophysics and multi-omics to understand how enzymes are regulated and how they control biological processes. Ivan completed his MChem and DPhil at the University of Oxford and subsequently worked as a postdoc before joining the University of Auckland in 2014. He moved to the University of Melbourne in 2021. He received an ARC Future Fellowship in 2026. Ivan has published over 80 research articles and book chapters with more than 5000 citations. He has received several awards for his research and supervision, including the 2025 Sir Paul Callaghan Medal from the Australia and New Zealand Society for Magnetic Resonance and the 2024 RACI Chemistry Supervisor of the Year Award (Victoria).

https://leung.chemistry.unimelb.edu.au/

All Welcome!