Research Lec 1 - Sabine Piller

Question 1

Journey to being a scientist

Answer 1

• Age of 6: deep sea diver
• changed to marine biologist
• First degree: MSc in gill physiology of marine blue swimmer crabs (Uni of Alabama, Birmingham USA)
• Research assistant at Uni of Vienna in Neuroscience department on physiology of prey recognition of South American jumping spiders
• PhD at John Curtin School of medical research, ANU, ACT > neuroscience department on a HIV protein. (shows ion channel)

Question 2

PhD work

Answer 2

• Electrophysiology: bilayer and patch-clamping
• site directed mutagenesis, molecular biology
• protein purification, HPLC
• Confocal microscopy

Question 3

Current research projects.

Answer 3

Stopped with HIV work, no PC3 facility
• Major interest is protein methylation and its
effects on cellular pathways
• Methods and techniques used:
Tissue culture, protein expression, confocal microscopy,
fluorescent labelling, SDS-PAGE, Western blotting,
apoptosis, cell cycle nuclear transport, ion channels,
mass spectrometry,

Question 4

HIV -> Protein methylation

Answer 4

Background of HIV and replication
• HIV and protein methylation
• Background of protein methylation
• Protein methylation in other cellular
pathways (cell cycle, cancer, neurons)
• Protein methylation in plants

Question 5

HIV

Answer 5

• retrovirus
• lentivirus
• SINGLE stranded RNA (2 copies)
• enveloped
• Cone shaped =mature

Question 6

Prevention of HIV

Answer 6

Using detergents on hands and clothes breaks down its lipid bilayer envelope > becomes non-infectious.

Question 7

HIV replication

Answer 7

• GP120 of HIV and CD4 of healthy cell interact
• attaches to the immune cell
• membrane interacts with the bilayer
• cone is injected into the memberane
• undergo translation and transcription.

Question 8

Effect of protein methylation

Answer 8

Increases the release of HIV virus

• not properly developed (less infective)
• reduced infectivity

Question 9

Protein methylation

Answer 9

• Important for regulating many key cellular events such as
transcription, stress response, T-cell activation, ageing, nuclear
transport, neuronal differentiation, cytokine signaling, splicing,
and ion channel functioning
• Most likely mechanism is via regulating protein-protein
interactions