Structural insights into the mechanism of chromatin remodellers

• Graduate Research Masters
• Masters by Coursework
• Honours

Epigenetic silencing regulates our genome without changing the underlying code. We want to understand how a family of ATPases causes epigenetic silencing in atomic details using a specialised structural biology technique called cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM). The student will produce proteins using an insect cell expression system and biochemically characterise them with ATPase and DNA binding assays. The student will then use cryoEM to obtain high-resolution protein structure bound to DNA or nucleosome. This will result in a molecular movie detailing the essential biological process of epigenetic silencing.

The Shakeel lab is interested in genome regulation and repair. We also develop methods in cryoEM. We take an integrative structural biology approach to answering our lab’s research questions. This approach includes cryoEM coupled with different flavours of mass spectrometry, biochemistry, biophysics, single-molecule, and genomics.