My lab is having a terrific summer so far. I’m not saying that to make a statement or massage my ego but I am happy to see progress. My two Dutch students (Daan and Lennart) made significant contributions to the projects. With Masayo in maternity leave, I was anxious about slowdowns in the lab. Lennart took some of Masayo duties in managing the day to day lab-life. I must say Lennart is doing a great job. As for myself, I’m stuck in front of my computers writing papers and grant proposals. However, I’m always pleased to discuss results, propose futur experiments, and explain projects anytime with my lab members. My office door is always open, and I like to keep it that way.

A photo of Lennart’s crystal photos of PRMT5, a 72Kda human argine-methyltransferase. This is one of the hits we obtained and we are currently optimizing the crystallization conditions.

The last 4 months have been really exciting. The work in the lab has been terrific. Thanks to Masayo’s skills, the projects have been really taking off. We have been doing a bunch of cloning and building numerous constructs of various histone methyltransferase (HMTase). In addition, we started working on some putative regulatory partners. One of our goals is to find highly selective and specific HMTase inhibitors, especially for the NSD family. To do so, we are heavily using virtual ligand screening methods and come-up with a short list of molecules to try in the lab. The latest incarnation of AutoDock, AutoDock Vina, have been very useful and efficient to us. Here an animation of the best candidate we found so far, out of over 10,000 molecules of potential interest.

NSD1 SET domain virtual ligand screening

After weeks of ordering lab stuffs, chemicals and equipments, the research projects are taking off. Good data starts accumulating. I’m very pleased with that. Thanks to a grant from the national research foundation of Korea, Masayo joined the lab along with a lab assistant and an undergraduate student. I’m thrilled to see the lab alive and moving forward through our projects. Check-out our lab website: http://webbuild.knu.ac.kr/~diluccio/