BurkeLab

Today I got to meet Scott and Kelly, proud parents of our just graduated CALVIN WINKLER, during the @MizzouBiology Honors Reception. Calvin will be co-author on 2 (3?) papers with @bthomasZOU and @DavePorciani on applying aptamer technology to cancer. (One submitted last week!)

End of an era and passing the torch, as Brian takes over the anti-cancer aptamer work and David leaves @BondLifeSci @Mizzou for new challenges Bittersweet/awesome when good friends and long-time collaborators succeed and move on Watch out San Diego! @DavePorciani @bthomasZOU

There’s a new Dr. in the house! Congrats to freshly-minted DR. JORDYN LUCAS @JordynLucas2

They were ‘allowed’ to react at any site, but nearly all reacted at Gs Weird, eh? 🤷🏻‍♂️ Maybe G shifts 2’OH pKa, or maybe guanosine, which is bristling with H bond donors and acceptors and stacks especially well, provided the best handle for holding the 2’ 0H in position to react

VERY EXCITED to see these scores this morning for an F30 application. Excellent MD/PhD student, careful attention to proposal components, involved and generous mentoring team, and very responsive to initial critiques. Honored to be helping to lead this team!!

2nd, it is relatively straightforward to map modification sites precisely for the cis-ribozymes that do 2’ phosphorylation. Interesting preference for modifying at G.  3/

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34th day of the year 27 citations so far On pace for a PR at 290 for 2023. (Old PR = 277 in 2021) Might even bump that h-index up a notch or two! <It’s important to focus on things where we have no control.>

Starting now!

This week! @BurkeLabRNA alumn Kwaku Tawiah is the featured speaker at the Dec ACES event (Alternative Career Exploration in the Science). @LabMed_Guy

Exactly! And the cell lines to be used for positive selection and for depletion express exactly the right combinations of receptors to reinforce the specificity we are aiming for.

Georg’s new aptamer populations are behaving beautifully! White = beads only Black = seven closely related cell-surface proteins. Selection target was soluble version of #5. Ready to move on to Cell-SELEX to get the ones the bind #5 in context! @AzCecchini

Now that Lynden has passed Comps and is almost done with his last graduate class, his research is about to take off. Expect an exciting story or two in late 2023!

The tic-tac-toe feature seems to be repeated and rotated.

It’s official. Lynden is now PhD Candidate Lynden Voth! Watch out — the World of Weird Reverse Transcriptases will never be the same.

East side of lake in Cosmo-Bethel Park, looking west.

Columbia, MO

Good place to go over page proofs. ⁦ @nchembio⁩ ⁦@BaumLabSLU⁩ ⁦@TheJoyofScience⁩