01.03.2026 22:40 —
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Want to know how bees count to two, and why it matters?
on how bees count to two
open.substack.com/pub/peterkde...
Yay the students are back!
Health & Safety lab training for 400-level students this week. Bright eyed, bushy tailed, and super keen for some lab research!
Insect research has used Drosophila as a model organism for over a century. But today’s tools now open up a much wider spectrum of insects which deserve to be studied. See the recent commentary in @fly-journal.bsky.social by @peterkdearden.bsky.social, ‘Why just fly?’ doi.org/10.1080/1933...
26.02.2026 11:42 — 👍 14 🔁 11 💬 3 📌 1
Why we need to expect better from science leadership.
on trusting scientists to lead.
open.substack.com/pub/peterkde...
After three (tumultuous) years guiding the department, Professor Peter Dearden has stepped aside from his role as Head of Department to refocus on research and teaching. Professor Julian Eaton-Rye has taken over as HOD, having starting in December last year.
blogs.otago.ac.nz/thesheet/hod...
‘An AlphaFold 4’ – scientists marvel at DeepMind drug spin-off’s exclusive new AI
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
"Anyone who writes seriously will recognize how useful writing can be in the thinking process. ... Or as Richard Feynman said of his notebooks: “They aren’t a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process.”"
www.thetransmitter.org/artificial-i...
"When we talk about translatable skills from (science) grad school,... near the top of all lists is critical thinking, ... It’s knowing when I don’t know something. That is: I’m (usually) very good at recognizing things I don’t understand."
24.02.2026 22:02 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
🎉 GIVEAWAY: Win a free IUCr2026 workshop registration!
Hit 20 likes = TWO winners!
To enter: Like, comment your workshop pick, tag a colleague & repost.
Winner: Feb 27 👉 event.fourwaves.com/...
#IUCR #IUCr2026 #crystallography
One week left to apply for the protein crystallography focused 2.5 year postdoc position in my group @otagobiochemist.bsky.social :
otago.taleo.net/careersectio...
Department of Biochemistry Seminar
Tues 24 Feb 12pm Room BIG13
Assoc Prof Kerwyn Huang
Associate Professor of Bioengineering, Standford University
How resource competition shapes the gut microbiome
PDB-101 materials explore how researchers are using biology in industry.
Watch a webinar to start Exploring the Workhorses of Biotechnology
The indomitable Dr Jordon Lima has been awarded an Otago Health Sciences Māori Postdoc Fellowship to establish a lab in Te Tairāwhiti for cancer screening, working with local cancer care services and Te Aho Matatū Cancer Genetics Lab at Otago Biochem.
Ka mau te wehi!
www.otago.ac.nz/news/newsroo...
A mihi whakatau last week to welcome new staff to Otago Biochemistry, including new lecturer Assoc Prof Matt McNeil 😊
16.02.2026 00:17 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Yup. What's unimaginable is the work that went into synthesising/purifying/crystallising proteins UNSUCCESSFULLY in the past 50 yrs, that don't have a structure to show for it. The structures in the training data represent just the tip of the iceberg in terms of effort. So many postgrad tears...
08.02.2026 23:03 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
On the second law of thermodynamics
open.substack.com/pub/peterkde...
Big recommend for Otago-based biologist Peter Dearden’s excellent substack.
open.substack.com/pub/peterkde...
Teasing out more of the details of the amazing machinery behind photosynthesis - by Otago biochemists Bharat Majhi & Julian Eaton-Rye
08.02.2026 21:42 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Thanks to everyone who participated and I have a blog post here with lots of resources that can help with scientific figure design, posters, grant figures, and data visualization!
#SciArt #Academia #sciencepublishing #journalcovers #academics #phd #gradschool
www.maayanvisuals.com/post/visual-...
Something to lift a biochemists heart and make them smile
04.02.2026 21:54 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Great to see Alice contributing to this collection of knowledge for the structural biology community!
Can't wait to see what she does next when she returns to Otago later this year 😊
Department of Biochemistry Seminar
Monday 9 Feb, 12pm, Rm BIG13
Professor Alika K. Maunakea, University of Hawai'i, Manoa
Epigenetic origins of health disparities among native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders
I have been experimenting with a lot of different materials for my biomolecules lately, but I always come back to the gummy-worm-style 🐛
Protein colored by b-factor / rendered in Blender / pdb struktur loaded with #molecularnodes
#blender3d #scientificillustration
I’m working on a new Mixture issue today, but have to finish something else first, so why don’t you reread the previous one while you wait? open.substack.com/pub/mixture/...
30.01.2026 09:53 — 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
I started a thing on Substack- here is my first post. I hope you like it.
On teaching evolution open.substack.com/pub/peterkde...
Take a look at what the high school students got up to when they visited the Department of Biochemistry a few weeks ago during Hands On @Otago
youtu.be/5YxMKM4Vco0
Otago Department of Biochemistry Seminar
Monday 2 Feb, 11:00am
George Petersen Seminar Room 2.31
Dr Christine Jones, Research Investigator, Arvinas Inc, Connecticut USA
Targeted protein degradation and PROTAC development at Arvinas
Most of us are pretty good at spotting problems with grammar, word choice, sentence structure, etc., right? These small-scale “errors” are abundant in an early draft of anything, and it’s easy (if time-consuming) to mark them, and maybe correct them. 1/
#scientificwriting #highered #scicomm
Latest publication from Otago Biochemistry
Decoding the interconnected splicing patterns of hepatitis B virus and host using large language and deep learning models
www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...
