2007 ASBMB President’s Award: Andrew Ellisdon

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Monash University

Andrew Ellisdon completed his Bachelor of Biomedical Science degree with Honours at Monash University in 2002. His first serious endeavour into scientific research came during his Honours year in the laboratory of Associate Professor Steve Bottomley, in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Monash University. During his Honours year, Andrew studied the conformational changes and aggregation mechanisms of the ataxin-3 protein, the causative protein of spinocerebellar ataxia type-3 (Machado-Joseph Disease). This study ignited a keen interest in both protein misfolding and the biophysical basis for polyglutamine disease, which would shape Andrew's research over the next four years. Andrew was then awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award and a Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences Postgraduate Excellence Award, allowing him to undertake his PhD studies. Andrew continued in the same lab researching the errant conformational changes of the ataxin-3 protein. This study has culminated in a series of three papers, two in Journal of Biological Chemistry and one in Journal of Molecular Biology, which have mapped the aggregation pathway of the ataxin-3 protein. These papers illustrated the role for non-polyglutamine regions in dictating many of the aggregation characteristics of polyglutamine proteins. Andrew's current work is aimed at using this knowledge base to find the key aggregation regions that could be targeted for the design of specific inhibitors of the aggregation process. This ASBMB Fellowship has allowed Andrew to travel to the prestigious Gordon Conference on CAG triplet repeat disorders in Aussois, France. At this conference, Andrew presented a poster on his work, receiving encouraging feedback and invitations for collaborative opportunities. The fellowship also provided funding for Andrew to give two seminars to the structural biology laboratories of Professor Ernest Laue and Dr Murray Stewart in Cambridge, UK.

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This page last modified: October 10, 2008.