2003 ASBMB Fellowship: Amelia Johnston

Amelia Johnston undertook her Bachelor of Science Degree in 1996 at La Trobe University, majoring in Biochemistry. She completed honours under the supervision of Dr Gideon Polya in 1999. This work involved the discovery of novel protease inhibitors from plant sources.

Amelia then spent the following year as a research assistant under the supervision of Dr Mike Ryan and Professor Nick Hoogenraad (also in the Biochemistry Department at La Trobe University) in the area of mitochondria protein import in mammalian cells. She stayed on to begin a PhD in 2001 supervised by Dr Ryan and co-supervised by Professor Hoogenraad.

The research Amelia has undertaken for her PhD involves the study of the TOM components in mammalian mitochondria. As most mitochondrial proteins are encoded by nuclear genes, they must be targeted to and imported into this double-membraned organelle. In order for this to occur, multi-subunit protein complexes exist in both the outer (TOM) and inner (TIM) membranes. Amelia's research has focussed on Tom7, a small protein important in the dynamics and biogenesis of the TOM complex.

Work detailing the identification and characterisation of human Tom7 was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in 2002. The assembly of Tom7 into the mature TOM complex proved to be truly unique to mammalian systems with the protein assembling via an intermediate complex which does not occur in fungi. To detect subunits within this complex, a novel "supershift" technique was established whereby mitochondria containing newly imported Tom7 were incubated with antibodies specific for other individual TOM components prior to separation by blue native electrophoresis. Amelia also co-authored a review in early 2003 for Experimental Physiology on import of nuclear encoded proteins into mitochondria.

The ASBMB fellowship will allow Amelia to travel to San Francisco in December of 2003 to attend the 43rd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. This will provide a great opportunity to meet a wide variety of leading researchers, both within and beyond of her current area of research.

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This page last modified: October 10, 2008.