Congratulations to our new PhD, Elizaveta Wick!

Dr. Wick successfully defended their PhD, “Viral Hijacking of Ubiquitin Ligases: Lessons from Human Cytomegalovirus pUL145” on May 10.

Title of Defense talk: “Viral Hijacking of Ubiquitin Ligases: Lessons from Human Cytomegalovirus pUL145”

PI: Dr. Nicholas G. Brown

Awards and Highlights

2020 Pharmacology Service and Outreach Award

Publications

Umano, A., Fang, K., Qu, Z., Scaglione, J.B., Altinok, S., Treadway, C.J., Wick, E.T., Paulakonis, E., Karunanayake, C., Chou, S., Bardakjian, T.M., Gonzalez-Alegre, P., Page, R.C., Schisler, J.C., Brown, N.G., Yan, D., Scaglione, K.M. The molecular basis of spinocerebellar ataxia type 48 caused by a de novo mutation in the ubiquitin ligase CHIP. J BIol Chem 2022 May; 298(5): 101899. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbc.2022.101899.

Enrico TP, Stallaert W, Wick ET, Ngoi P, Wang X, Rubin SM, Brown NG, Purvis JE, Emanuele MJ. Cyclin F drives proliferation through SCF-dependent degradation of the retinoblastoma-like tumor suppressor p130/RBL2. Elife. 2021 Dec 1;10:e70691. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70691. PMID: 34851822; PMCID: PMC8670743.

Uprety R, Che T, Zaidi SA, Grinnell SG, Varga BR, Faouzi A, Slocum ST, Allaoa A, Varadi A, Nelson M, Bernhard SM, Kulko E, Le Rouzic V, Eans SO, Simons CA, Hunkele A, Subrath J, Pan YX, Javitch JA, McLaughlin JP, Roth BL, Pasternak GW, Katritch V, Majumdar S. Controlling opioid receptor functional selectivity by targeting distinct subpockets of the orthosteric site. Elife. 2021 Feb 8;10:e56519. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.56519. PMID: 33555255; PMCID: PMC7909954.

Watson ER, Grace CRR, Zhang W, Miller DJ, Davidson IF, Prabu JR, Yu S, Bolhuis DL, Kulko ET, Vollrath R, Haselbach D, Stark H, Peters JM, Brown NG, Sidhu SS, Schulman BA. Protein engineering of a ubiquitin-variant inhibitor of APC/C identifies a cryptic K48 ubiquitin chain binding site. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Aug 27;116(35):17280-17289. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1902889116. Epub 2019 Jul 26. PMID: 31350353; PMCID: PMC6717256.

Pics from Dr. Wick’s defense