Dr Kate Michie
Education
- BSc Hons (1st Class) (The University of Sydney). 1998
- PhD (The UniversityÌýof Sydney) 2004
Biography
Dr is Chief Scientist of the ÌýStructural Biology Facility (MWAC) and a Senior lecturer in BABS. She isÌýa molecular biologist/biochemist with special interests in structural biology. Kate completed her doctoral degree at the under the supervision of Dr Liz Harry and Professor Gerry Wake, working in the field of bacterial cell division. (For work completed during this time see and ).
In 2005 she received a L'Oréal-UNESCO Fellowship and spent the next five years working with at the in Cambridge, UK. She carried out research into the structure and function of Structural Maintenance of Chromosome (SMC) complexes and how they exert molecular control over the topological and spatial organization of chromosomes (see ). In 2006 she received a Marie Curie Incoming Postdoctoral Fellowship and continued working on SMC proteins and within the bacterial cell division field. During this time in Cambridge she published a number first author papers (including , , and ) and contributed significantly to work published in and .
She returned to science in Australia in 2012, working with and at the University of Sydney. In this role she worked on Myosin Binding protein C (see and ).
In 2015 Kate joined UNSW as a Senior Research Associate working with working on light harvesting proteins (see ) and the Ezrin family of proteins ( see and )
In 2019 Kate established the Structural Biology Facility (SBF) with at UNSW ().
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Professional Experience
Senior Lecturer 2022
Adjunct Lecturer (BABS) (2021-)
Chief Scientist SBF, MWAC UNSW. (2019-)
Senior Research Associate, School of Physics, UNSW. (2015-2019)
Senior Postdoctoral Scientist, School of Molecular Biosciences, The University of Sydney (2012-2015)
MRC Investigator Scientist, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK.(2008-2010)
Marie Curie International Fellow, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK. Funded by 6th European Commission Framework (2006-2008)
UNESCO L'OREAL International Fellow for Young Women in Life Sciences MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge. Supervisor–Dr Jan Löwe. Funded by UNESCO and L’Oreal. (2005)
Postdoctoral Scientist, School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences, The University of Sydney, Australia. Supervisor–Dr Liz Harry and Professor Gerry Wake. (2004)
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Professional Activities
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- Chairman of the Sydney Protein Group (Nov 2021-current)
- Greater Sydney CAP Leader for Synchrotron beam time at the Australian Synchrotron (Sept 2021- current).
- Set-up and runs UNSW Structural Biology Facility. This includes a number of biophysical analysis instruments, a number of robotic liquid handlers and an X-ray diffractometer since 2019
- NSW Cryo EM Users Group Meeting co-organiserÌý and Chair (with Dr Nick Ariotti) ÌýG37, F10 Chemical Sciences Building, UNSW, Ìý Ìý Thursday 28th February 2019.
- Interactive Science Expo Session presenter, UNSW, November 28th 2019, Wallace Wurth BuildingÌý
- Structural Biology Session organizer and presenter, Sensory Scientific Exhibition & Discovery Day, UNSW, December 11th 2018, Wallace Wurth Building
- Invited Chair for Integrative Structural Biology Symposium, Combio 2018, Sydney
- Organizational Committee member, Australian Society of Biophysics Meeting, UTS.
- Organiser and chair of Cryo EM Australian Society of Biophysics Workshop, UTS, 2017
- NSW ASBMB State Representative (Australian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) (2015-2017)
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- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
ÌýInternational
ASIAN OFFICE OF AEROSPACE R&D 21IOA019.ÌýAwarded Sep 2021 for funding 2021-2023.
MEDICAL RESEARCH FUTURE FUND (MRFF)ÌýAPP2016906. Awarded April 2022.
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2007 Ìý ÌýNamed ‘Rising Talent’ and short-listed for Women’s Forum 3rd Ed, Deauville, France.
2006 Ìý ÌýMarie Curie International Fellowship Funded by 6th European Commission Framework
2005ÌýÌýÌýUNESCO L'Oreal International Fellowship for Women in Science 7th edition of the L’ORÉAL-UNESCO FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE (Life sciences), Funded by UNESCO and L’Oreal.
We want to understand how biology uses proteins to control the shape of membranes. In particular we focus on the proteins essential to the processes of cell division and building cell surface structures such as villi and vesicles. The proteins involved in these processes interact with themselves and with the membrane to bend and shape it, and to tether other proteins to it. The types of proteins involved arise in all the domains of life— archaea, bacteria and eukaryotes, and, maybe not surprisingly, are often carried out by related proteins.
We focus on understanding structurally the proteins that carry out these tasks. We use X-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy and a range of protein and biophysical experiments to probe our targets.
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CURRENT RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
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Dynamin-like Proteins in Bacteria
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Tubulin-like proteins in Bacteria and Archaea (collaboration with Dr Brendan Burns)
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Ezrin/Moesin and Merlin and the membrane in humans (Jointly supervised with Prof Curmi)
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Understanding mutations in clinical setting (collaboration with Dr Emily Oates)
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Alphafold2- implementation and it's roles inÌýintegrativeÌýstructural biology
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My Research Supervision
PhDs in Physics
PhDs in BABS
Honours in BABS
My Teaching
Currently teaching into: