Visitor of the Week: Matthew Jessop

Meet Matthew Jessop of the Institute of Cancer Research (United Kingdom). Matt is a postdoc and this is his first in-person meeting since the pandemic. He is a member of Sebastian Guettler’s lab, and is at CSHL for The PARP Family & ADP-ribosylation meeting where his poster presentation of “Structural basis of tankyrase activation by polymerization” was met with “in-depth discussions about what [they’re] working on and…some [new] ideas about other things [they] could try.”

Tell us about your research.
I’m working towards solving the structure of Tankyrase, a protein involved in signaling pathways that often go wrong in cancer. By understanding Tankyrase’s structure, we hope to build up a model of how it functions in the cell to be able to design new drugs to target these pathways.

How did you decide to focus on this project?
I’ve been working in structural biology for a few years, but I really wanted to work on a project that had real-world implications for human health. The team I’m working in is also very multidisciplinary, which means that we’re constantly learning from each other and giving each other fresh ideas.

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
I’ve been lucky to have amazing mentors over the past few years, both when I was studying in New Zealand and during my PhD in France – Dr. Irina Gutsche and Dr. Ambroise Desfosses taught me a huge amount about electron microscopy and made me passionate about the technique.

Where do you see yourself in five years?
Eventually I’d love to start my own research group and keep working in structural biology of proteins involved in human disease, either in the UK or back home in New Zealand.

What do you love most about being a researcher?
Even though the problems we work on can be challenging, having the chance to increase our understanding of these complex biological processes at an atomic level is really exciting.

What drew you to attend this meeting?
There was an amazing speaker line-up at this meeting, and being able to see the latest unpublished work was a really big drawcard. Even with all of the ways that conferences have changed recently, there really is no substitute for getting together in person with experts in the field to talk about recent developments and fresh ideas!

What is your key takeaway from the Meeting; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
There have been some exciting new experimental techniques for studying PARPs presented at this meeting, and we hope to try and use these for our own project in the future.

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this meeting?
I would say go for it! The whole conference is particularly well-run, and it’s in an amazing location too.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Meeting?
For me the poster session was a highlight – as well as presenting my own poster I got to walk around the room and see the huge variety of work being done in the PARP field. There are people from all different scientific backgrounds at this meeting, which means that you get lots of ideas from fresh perspectives.

Is this your first in-person meeting since the pandemic?
This is my first in-person meeting since before the pandemic. While virtual conferences have been great for the past two years in keeping us connected, and hybrid meetings such as this one give people options to still attend if they’re unable to make it in-person, the networking that happens outside of the scientific presentations is really valuable.

What do you like most about your time at CSHL?
Being able to walk down to the harbour and get some fresh air during breaks was fantastic, it’s a wonderful place to have a conference!

Thank you to Matt for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured researchers - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

Image provided by Matthew Jessop

Visitor of the Week: Yi Fei Lee

Meet Yi Fei Lee of the Genome Institute of Singapore within the Agency for Science, Technology and Research! The PhD student is a member of the Laboratory of Translational Cancer Biology led by Dr. Tam Wai Leong. She spent most of this week with us at The PARP Family & ADP-ribosylation virtual meeting. This is Yi Fei’s first meeting at CSHL!

Tell us about your research.
The molecular profiles of lung adenocarcinoma differ between ethnic groups, and we use sequencing data from one of the largest Asian clinical cohorts to predict new driver genes. I'm currently working on understanding the mechanisms underlying how these genes drive cancer formation or progression, as well as how we might be able to therapeutically exploit them.

How did you decide to focus on this area/project?
I've always been interested in cancer research because it is such a prevalent healthcare problem, and also an intriguing intellectual one to tackle. Cancer cells are diverse and able to grow and rewire themselves rapidly, presenting new therapeutic vulnerabilities yet also conferring resistance to existing therapies - it's almost like a cat and mouse game. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality so I hope that incremental findings in this field could lead to better clinical outcomes.  

What and/or who is the inspiration behind your scientific journey?
I have always had an interest in the sciences so it was only a natural extension to try out research. During my undergraduate days, I interned at different labs and was fortunate to have had inspiring mentors who helped me to grow as a scientist and shape my research interests. The potential in uncovering new knowledge that could be used to meet currently unmet needs also keeps me motivated.

What impact do you hope to make through your work?
I hope to be able to identify novel biomarkers or drug targets that can enable better stratification of patients for more effective treatments. I would love for my work to be able to add value to the field and contribute to improving therapeutic outcomes. 

What do you love most about being a researcher?
I like tinkering around in the lab and being curious, so designing and carrying out experiments to test my hypotheses has always been an enjoyable process. I’m also thankful for the collaborative and supportive environment and love bouncing ideas off colleagues.

What drew you to attend this meeting?
Through my research, I came across a PARP protein and realized there is so much to learn about this fascinating family of proteins! I felt that this meeting would be a good platform to interact with and understand the work of other researchers in the field.

What is your key takeaway from the Meeting; and how do you plan to apply it to your work?
The meeting gave me new insight into the balance and cross-talk between ADP-ribosylation and other post-translational modifications such as phosphorylation, and how that in turn regulates protein activity. I will be using these new ideas to relook at my data from different angles and plan some new experiments.

What feedback or advice would you share with someone considering to participate in this meeting?
Although meetings are inevitably in virtual format these days, a lot of care and thought has gone into creating channels for discussion and interaction between the participants, and I find this to be very valuable. I actually also liked that I could take my time to look at the posters on the virtual platform – there are so many interesting and informative ones! I’m enjoying my first CSHL meeting and my advice would be to make use of the available platforms to engage with other participants.

What’s the most memorable thing that happened during the Meeting?
The meeting is still in progress, but one of the most memorable moments for me thus far has been the Meet the Speakers session where I got to chat with the speakers – Drs. Lee Kraus and Anthony Leung. I was able to gain a sense of how the field has evolved and what other exciting pursuits lie ahead. I also enjoyed learning about the research interests of other trainees in a more informal setting, and this definitely added a more personal touch to the virtual format of the meeting. 

Thank you to Yi Fei for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured researchers - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.

Visitor of the Week: Eduardo Aguilar

Meet Eduardo Aguilar of Rockefeller University. Eduardo is a fourth year graduate student in Charlie Rice’s lab and also works with Peggy MacDonald. He returned to campus to attend his second meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, The PARP Family & ADP-ribosylation. 

What are your research interests? What are you working on?
Generally speaking, I’m interested in using viruses to probe complex host cell biology, usually in the realm of innate immunity. I like to think of viruses as maleable stressors.

How did you decide to make this the focus of your research?
I sort of stumbled upon it, but it really set in once I realized just how much fundamental biology was historically done in viruses.

How did your scientific journey begin? 
Normally I like to say dinosaurs: Jurassic Park was all the rage when I was a kid and it got me interested in the natural sciences early.

Was there something specific about The PARP Family & ADP-ribosylation meeting that drew you to attend?
I wanted to see what’s been developed in terms of proteomic approaches, and I thought it would be helpful to see what kind of tangential research could be of use to my work.

What is your key takeaway from the meeting?
There’s a lot of important work being done in the field, but there is still so much left to do. It’s crazy, actually!

Did you pick up or learn something new from the meeting that you plan to apply to your work?  
I caught up with some previous contacts while making new ones, but I also got some supporting insights on some ideas  I’d had before the meeting.

How many CSHL meetings and/or courses have you attended? 
This is my second meeting. I attended the Retroviruses in 2015  and I applied to the Proteomics course offered this summer.

If someone curious in attending a future iteration of this meeting asked you for feedback or advice on it, what would you tell him/her?
CSHL is extraordinarily historical. It’s like a living museum in a way, yet it offers insight into some of the newest developments in various fields. It’s pretty neat when you think about it.

What do you like most about your time at CSHL?
I’d say walking around and coming across the different sculptures scattered around the campus. They’re truly striking!

Thank you to Eduardo for being this week's featured visitor. To meet other featured scientists - and discover the wide range of science that takes part in a CSHL meeting or course - go here.