Friday the 13th is not necessarily bad as we found out today. Angelina’s manuscript on the discovery of new SMPD3 inhibitors was accepted today for publication. Congratulations!

This week was a very successfull one, with 2 papers accepted, one where Femke and Joram did a real good job in bringing together all data on the involvement of extracellular histones in COVID-19 and one where we investigated glycocalix degradation during coronary artery bypass grafting, together with our colleagues at the ICU.

After having experienced te Corona-pandemic and the inevitable consequences for organizing meetings, a next NSBM Meeting was held in collaboration with our Belgian friends from Brussels, as organized by Prof. Wim Vrancken of the VUB in Brussels, Belgium.

The meeting was titled:

Structural bioinformatics beyond AlphaFold2

location: U-residence aan de VUB (Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel)

There will be 3 sessions:  
1 – “Large scale AlphaFold2 analyses” – Christine Orengo, UCL, UK

2 – “Probabilistic approaches and representing conformational variability” – Max Bonomi, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France

3 – “Proteomics & protein structure” – Ron Heere, M4I, UM, NL

Today Emre started his position as post-doctoral fellow in our group. While he still needs to formally finalize his studies in Halle, he is now free to work on the topics of our research.
Welcome Emre and good luck!

Today Song (Xiaosong) defended her thesis, and as with everything, she did this in style and very well.

Due to the Corona pandemic sadly she and the committee members could not be therein person, but nonetheless it was a very special and solemn moment for all of us, and for Song in particular.

Those who missed it, there is still a chance to have a look at it, as the ceremony was recorded and can now be found on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PD0Lrm9Ok0

All the best to you Song, we will certainly miss you but look forward to seeing you again in the future.

Today Jiachang, or as we like to say “Jia”, has arrived as a new PhD student in the lab.
You are very welcome Jia, and we wish you all the best for the coming four years!

Today we heard that a manuscript written by Hessel on a topic where modelling and experimental structures are compared was accepted for publication.
Congrats Hessel !

Today we received a message from Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol. that our manuscript on the analysis of COVID-19 patient samples was accepted for publication.

It is again a nice work that would not have been established without the help of our colleagues from Spain and Sweden, thanks all for your efforts and most of all congrats to Joram and Femke.

Today we received confirmation that Joram’s first major manuscript, on the involvement of NETs in COVID-19 was accepted for publication in Scientific Reports. Many thanks to our collaborators from Sweden and Spain! It was quite a difficult ride to have the manuscript, at this times of the pandemic, published. Nonetheless, it’s there now!