WEHI Special Structural Biology Seminar hosted by Dr Shabih Shakeel
 

Professor Dame Carol Robinson DBE FRS FMedSci FRSC

Dr Lee’s Professor of Chemistry – University of Oxford

Founder Director – Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, UK

 

Protein lipid interactions in the gas phase – diversity, selectivity and functional regulation

 

Davis Auditorium (in-person viewing highly recommended)
Join via TEAMS

Including Q&A session

Carol Robinson is the Dr Lee’s Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and is the Founder Director of Oxford’s Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery.  She is recognised for establishing mass spectrometry as a viable technology to study the structure and function of proteins.  Carol graduated from the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1979 and completed her PhD at Cambridge University.  After a career break of eight years to focus on her family, she became Professor of Mass Spectrometry at Cambridge, returning to Oxford in 2009 to take up her current position.  In 2016, she co-founded OMass Therapeutics (Omass.com) with a number of postdoctoral research associates from her laboratory.

Her work has attracted numerous awards including the 2022 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry, the 2022 Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine, and most recently the 2023 ASMS John B. Fenn Award for a Distinguished Contribution in Mass Spectrometry, and election to the American Philosophical Society.  Carol is the former President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences USA and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  She was appointed DBE in 2013 for services to science and industry. 

Membrane lipids play a pivotal role by providing a stable environment for proteins within cell membranes while also actively regulating protein function. By utilizing advanced mass spectrometry methods to capture these interactions, we can now gain valuable insights into how lipids influence the structure and function of membrane proteins. Transitioning from basic bacterial systems to the investigation of human proteins extracted from diseased tissues reveals the intricate alterations in protein-lipid interactions and the effects of modifications within these pathophysiological contexts. Beginning with model systems, and advancing towards the analysis of receptors and transporters isolated directly from brain tissue, I will show how we are contributing to a thorough understanding of how these interactions transform and impact various disease processes.

All welcome!