Abstract

Friday 21 November, 13:00 – 14:00

Speaker: Helen Walden, University of Glasgow

Talk Title: Understanding Parkin’s E3 Ligase Activity

Biography: Helen obtained her BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Bath in 1998. She then moved to the University of St Andrews for her PhD, investigating the structural basis of protein hyperthermostability. In 2001, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee for a postdoc in the newly-established lab of Brenda Schulman at St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. It was here that Helen developed her interest in the mechanisms of ubiquitination, solving the structure of the E1 for Nedd8. In 2005, Helen moved to the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Laboratories of CRUK ’s London Research Institute (now Francis Crick Institute), to establish her own group. After tenure, Helen moved to the MRC -Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit at the University of Dundee from 2013, and in 2017 relocated her lab to the University of Glasgow as Professor of Structural Biology. Helen was a member of the EMBO Young Investigator Programme from 2011 to 2014, and received the Colworth medal from the Biochemical Society in 2015, and in 2016 she received an ERC Consolidator award.