New research into roadside testing of illicit drugs
In May, Massey University’s Nucleic Acid Chemical Biology team (Vyacheslav Filichev, Geoff Jameson, Elena Harjes, Pat Edwards, Tracy Hale, Hari Kurup, Tomasz Czapik and Bruce Chilton) and ESR’s Aptamer Team (Yasmin Liu, Hamish Dunham, Ethan Daugherty, Rishi Pandey, Sujan Yellagunda and Onyekachi Raymond) held a mini-symposium online at the Manawatū Massey University campus. The focus was to gain structural insights into problematic aptamer binding for more informed and rational engineering of devices for roadside testing of illicit drugs. The aptamer team was impressed with our research facilities and were seemingly more interested in the scientific discussion than the excellent lunch provided.
MoleculAR CAKE
On 29 March, Professor Scott McIndoe gave a presentation at Massey University entitled, “MoleculAR CAKE”. The talk introduced two new tools that the Mclndoe group have developed. First, a free augmented reality (AR) chemical education app. Secondly, continuous addition kinetic elucidation (CAKE), a technique the group has developed to extract the order in reactant, the order in catalyst, the rate constant, and the amount of poison in a catalytic reaction from a single experiment.
Student successes
In the Rowlands group, Sam Staniforth has joined as an MSc student and will be investigating site-selectivity catalysis using [2.2]paracyclophane catalysts. Cara Bosman and Elyn Clayr Asia have joined as part of a research course exploring asymmetric catalysis using [2.2]paracyclophane derivatives.
Dong Luo has joined the Harjes group as a PhD student. Dong will be investigating the structural basis of A3G-DNA interactions for antiviral defence.
