Associate Professor Gareth Rowlands bids farewell to Massey University after 17 impactful years as he joins Fonterra. His substantial contributions to the chemistry department, school and university have been greatly appreciated over the years. Gareth has had a huge influence on the students at Massey University, sharing his passion for organic chemistry, which he continues to show on MakingMolecules.com. We wish him continued success in his new role.
Associate Professor Catherine Whitby gave a keynote presentation about her scientific journey at the 2023 Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI) and Melbourne Protein Group (MPG) symposium for early and mid-career researchers, held on October 24-26 at RMIT University.
We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Dr Vyacheslav Filichev on his well-deserved promotion to Professor. Additionally, we are thrilled to announce that Vyacheslav has been appointed as a Fellow of the NZIC, acknowledging his outstanding leadership, initiative and dedicated efforts in the redevelopment of the Chemistry in New Zealand journal. His contributions have transformed the journal into an engaging and accessible online publication.
The APOBEC3 group (Professor Vyacheslav V. Filichev, Dr Elena Harjes, Dr Tracy Hale, Emeritus Professor Geoffrey B. Jameson and co-workers) published an article in Nature Communications on “Structure-guided inhibition of the cancer DNA-mutating enzyme APOBEC3A” (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-42174-w). This article summarises four crystal structures of various DNA hairpins with APOBEC3A and confirms that the mechanism of cytosine deamination by APOBEC3 is similar to that of single nucleoside cytidine deaminase and explains the signature of APOBEC3A-mediated mutations detected in cancer patients. The first inhibition of APOBEC3A in cells is demonstrated using molecules made in our laboratory. This provides a foundation for the evaluation of our inhibitors in animal models and the creation of the first mutation-suppressing drugs for clinical use.
Vyacheslav Filichev gave an invited talk about the development of APOBEC3 inhibitors at the in-person conference “Functional Nucleic Acids: From Laboratory to Targeted Molecular Therapy”, which was held on 23-24 November 2023 in Perth, Australia. The conference had 135 attendees with several overseas speakers who presented recent results and discussed current research trends in the field of modified DNA and RNA, mRNA vaccines, lipid nanoparticles and biology of long non-coding RNAs.
PhD student Brodie Matheson recently celebrated the publication of the introductory chapter of his thesis as the paper entitled, “The importance of second sphere interactions on single molecule magnet performance” (https://doi.org/10.1039/D3QI01634J)
The 32nd Massey-Victoria Chemistry Symposium was held on 17 November at Massey University. The event featured 10 presentations from students covering a diverse range of research. George Smith from Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) was awarded the Best Talk for his presentation entitled, “Synthesis and reactivity of novel group 14 – aluminium heterobimetallic complexes”. Elnaz Jangodaz of the Telfer group from Massey University gave a talk entitled, “Carbon dioxide capture using metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)” and was awarded the runner-up prize. Vyacheslav Filichev and Suraj Patel from Massey University and Benjamin Watts and Luke Lui (from VUW) served as organisers.
Congratulations to Bruce Chilton, who was a recipient of the Dean’s list of exceptional theses. Bruce was commended. The examiners congratulated him on the dissertation of high scientific quality in terms of logical reasoning, experimental approach, treatment of data and use of sources and literature.
Qayyum Shehzad (of the Whitby group) won a prize for the poster he presented on his research topic at the 4th Commonwealth Chemistry Posters online conference!
The Plieger group recently welcomed Golnaz Heidari as a new PhD student. Golnaz is working on an industrial PhD project at the Fonterra Research and Development Centre, looking at generating bioactive compounds from the fermentation of milk waste products using a metabolomic approach.
The Plieger group also recently celebrated with Sidney Woodhouse on the completion of her PhD project titled, "Exploring Methods of Magnetic Manipulation in Defective Dicubanes, Dinuclear, and Extended Structures". Sidney has since started work as an advisor at the Environmental Protection Authority NZ.
During the month of November, the Massey University chemistry team, in collaboration with colleagues in biology, physics, mathematics and statistics, hosted 100+ year 10 high school students and teachers for several STEM experience days. Students from high schools in the Central North Island region were invited to visit the university and experience a variety of science activities. During the chemistry activity, the students built their own solar cells. The students extracted anthocyanins from blueberries using reflux and used the extract in their solar cells. The students were able to have hands-on laboratory experience in the first-year chemistry labs, providing practical experience different from the school experience and inspiring them to continue with a science education. All students were excited to be able to produce a small current from their solar cells and were interested in the ‘real-life’ applications of the activity. Not only did the students show great engagement in the activities and ask very intelligent questions, but the experience of the university environment also led to the students showing interest in and asking many questions about university life, science education and career pathways.
