2002 ASBMB Fellowship: James Irving

Irving James Irving was first introduced to the world of science by his father, when at the age of six he was paid 50 cents pocket money to fill tip boxes. James went on to complete the science component of a BSc/LLB degree at Monash University in 1995. During a summer studentship with Dr Steve Ralph, he expressed and purified recombinant interferon-gamma for use in cell-based assays. After a year attempting to be interested in Law, he swapped the Law of Torts for Sambrook et al., and undertook an Honours project with Dr Terry Spithill and Dr Peter Smooker at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Monash University. The project involved setting up a yeast expression system for, purifying and characterising recombinant cathepsin L and B enzymes from Fasciola hepatica (liver fluke). It was far and away the most interesting and rewarding year of his educational career, and there was no question that he wanted to continue on to do a PhD. He came top of his Honours class and earned a Beckman/Coulter medal for Biochemistry.

Monash was to remain James' home as he commenced his PhD with Dr James Whisstock and Dr Rob Pike in August, 1998. He has been looking at the ability of some members of the serpin superfamily to inhibit papain-like cysteine proteinases, a property, which at the time was described only for one serpin, SCCA-1. Using mutagenesis and biochemical assays he found that the serpin scaffold is intrinsically capable of such inhibitory activity. He discovered that a chromatin-condensing serpin, MENT, is also a cysteine proteinase inhibitor, and using biochemical and biophysical techniques he is currently working to identify the influence of DNA and chromatin on this inhibitory activity. Part of James' research has been conducted away from the lab bench, at a computer terminal - a phylogenetic analysis he undertook of the serpin superfamily has formed the basis of the nomenclature for the family as a whole.

The ASBMB Fellowship will allow James to travel to Chicago to present two talks at the 3rd International Symposium on Serpin Biology, Structure and Function. The first will be on work looking at the interaction between MENT and DNA, and in the second talk he will present the structure of a thermostable serpin from the recently sequenced bacterium Thermobifida fusca.

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This page last modified: October 10, 2008.