2004 ASBMB Fellowship: José Perdomo

José Perdomo José completed his Honours year in 1997 at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Sydney, under the supervision of Dr Charles Collyer. He was awarded the Sydney University Biochemistry Alumni Association award for 'Most Outstanding Honours Thesis in the Area of Protein Chemistry'.

In 1998 José obtained an Australian Postgraduate Award and started PhD studies under the supervision of Associate Professor Merlin Crossley in the School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences, University of Sydney. Currently he is a postdoctoral fellow in this School.

The zinc finger motif is one of the most abundant protein domains found in mammals, and many are involved in the control of transcription through their ability to interact with nucleic acids. The research Jos´e undertook focused on the study of transcriptional regulation by zinc finger proteins in cells of the erythroid lineage and his investigations led to the discovery of two novel genes, Eos and Pegasus. Eos and Pegasus were found to be expressed in cells of the haematopoietic lineage and acted as transcriptional repressors when bound to their cognate DNA sites. These results were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in 2000. Subsequent characterisation showed that Eos regulates transcription by acting in concert with the transcriptional co-repressor CtBP. These results were published in the European Journal of Biochemistry in 2002.

José co-authored a paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in 2003 were it was shown that Eos had the ability to form higher order complexes in solution via self-association mediated by one of its zinc finger domains. Recently, Jos´e has been investigating the role of post-translational modifications in transcription factor activity, specifically the function of SUMO (a ubiquitin-like peptide that is covalently attached to target proteins) as a regulator of the transcriptional response. José co-authored a review on the topic of sumoylation published in EMBO Reports in 2003.

Previous Page | Top of Page
This page last modified: October 10, 2008.