2003 ASBMB Fellowship: Michelle Chow

Chow Michelle's undergraduate studies encompassed a wide range of subjects, including Maths, Chinese and History as part of her BA/BSc double degree. Whilst this allowed her to explore different interests as well as study and travel overseas, she always intended to study Biochemistry in her Honours year. So after a 2-year break from Biochemistry, in 2000 she joined the laboratory of Dr Steve Bottomley in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Monash University. Michelle's Honours project involved the characterisation of conformational changes in a dysfunctional variant of the protein a1-antitrypsin which misfolds and aggregates, and is associated with liver cirrhosis and emphysema. For her Honours year, Michelle was awarded the 2000 Beckman Coulter Medal in Biochemistry.

Upon commencing her PhD in 2001, Michelle was awarded the Monash University Sir James McNeill Foundation Postgraduate Research Scholarship, as well as a Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences Postgraduate Excellence Award. She embarked on a new project, moving from one recalcitrant protein to another. Her PhD focuses on the protein ataxin-3, which contains a polyglutamine tract resulting from a repeated CAG motif within its gene. The polyglutamine-expanded form of ataxin-3 is known to misfold and is associated with the neurodegenerative disorder Spinocerebellar Ataxia 3, also called Machado-Joseph Disease. Michelle's work involves the conformational analysis of ataxin-3 during its folding and misfolding pathways. Her results thus far indicate that if destabilised, ataxin-3 forms fibrillar aggregates via a partly folded intermediate. This result places ataxin-3 and possibly other polyglutamine proteins in the company of numerous disease-causing proteins that misfold and aggregate.

As a postgraduate student, Michelle has also explored her interest in scientific communication through her involvement in student organising committees for the Annual Conference within her own department and the Melbourne Protein Group inaugural symposium in 2002.

The ASBMB Fellowship has enabled Michelle to attend the Gordon Conference on CAG Triplet Repeat Disorders, which was held in Barga, Italy, in May, where she presented recent results of her research. During the same trip she also visited the laboratories of Dr Erich Wanker in Berlin and Dr Louise Serpell in Cambridge, both leading researchers in the field of protein misfolding and aggregation.

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This page last modified: October 10, 2008.