Dr Javier Sánchez Utgés

🔮 I cannot wait to see what everyone will have accomplished by this time next year. Hope to see many of you again in either #Washington or #Basel!

I also truly appreciated the chance to meet my future colleagues @nbordin.bsky.social, David Miller, Vaishali Waman, @judewells.bsky.social and Ian Sillitoe. I am thrilled to be joining your team soon!

A special shout-out as well to friends from @charlesuni.cuni.cz at beautiful Prague — @davhox.bsky.social, Vít Škrhák, Samuel Fanči and Hugo Hrbáň — always great to see you!

🤝 It was a real joy to reconnect with my PhD supervisor and mentor @gjbarton.bsky.social, as well as former colleagues
@stuartmac44.bsky.social, @foreveremain.bsky.social, @mitsenkov.bsky.social, Vanessza Fentor, Douglas Freeburn,
@tanmayee.bsky.social and @rosiegallagher.bsky.social!

🙏 Sincere thanks to conference organisers, COSI chairs, reviewers and all the outstanding speakers in my session — including @nbordin.bsky.social, Hanne Zillmer and Miguel Fernandez — for inspiring talks on #structural #domains, the #pocketome and #biophysical limits of the #protein #universe!

🎤 A special year — I had the honour of speaking at #3DSIG before 100+ peers, sharing three main #PhD projects, each published. A perfect wrap-up to six incredible years in the @bartongrp.bsky.social at the University of Dundee before starting a new chapter!

🧳 Fourth year in a row after #Sitges 2022, #Lyon 2023, and #Montreal last year. As always, it was intense, exciting, and enriching — the top place to stay current, spark ideas, reconnect with peers, and celebrate discovery in computational biology!

🌍 A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the annual #ISMB + #ECCB, international Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, organised by @iscb.bsky.social which took place in the magical city of #Liverpool!

Merci, crack! Després de conc anys, ja hi hem arribat. Ara comença la propera aventura!

Ankyrin repeats in context with human population variation Author summary Comparison of variation at each position of the amino acid sequence for a protein across different species is a powerful way to identify parts of the protein that are important for its ...

🗝️ Publications 🔗

📜 #1: tinyurl.com/UTGES-ANKS

📜 #2: tinyurl.com/UTGES-FRAGSYS

📜 #3: tinyurl.com/UTGES-LBS

📜 #4: tinyurl.com/UTGES-LIGYSIS

📜 #5: tinyurl.com/UTGES-FAM83G

Thanks also to my great friends, beautiful family and Prarthna. I would not have managed without you!

Special thanks to @gjbarton.bsky.social, @stuartmac44.bsky.social, @foreveremain.bsky.social, Uli, Rastko, @hajkdrost.bsky.social, Alessio, @bioinformagic.bsky.social, @davhox.bsky.social, Marek, Carol, Maria, Gopal, Peter, Rosie, Carey, Euan, Ieva, Stefan, Tanmayee, Maxim and so many others!

💙 🚀 I leave #Dundee with a heavy heart, having experienced and learned so much here — but also with excitement and hope for what lies ahead. A heartfelt #thank #you to everyone who has been part of my journey in Dundee!

🧠 🎉 Lastly, I took on several community roles — including PhD Student Representative for the #CB Division and Meeting Organiser for the #CLSIG — all of which I greatly enjoyed. These roles helped me feel deeply connected to the @bartongrp.bsky.social, #CLSIG and the wider #CB Division.

This was a valuable experience that allowed me to learn something entirely new, take a step back and gain fresh perspective on my PhD research. One of my favourite features of this amazing DTP I was fortunate enough to join!

🌐 🔍 As part of my #EASTBIO #DTP, I undertook a 3-month professional internship - #PIPS - at the @abpi.bsky.social. During this time, I worked alongside an excellent team at the Schools website project, which contributed to receiving the #ASE Green Tick award.

🌱 ⭐ I also had the opportunity to act as a day-to-day #supervisor for seven students at various stages, including #summer interns, #honours, #master’s, and #rotation-year PhD students. This was a deeply rewarding and collaborative experience.

I participated in twenty scientific #conferences and symposia — including seven international events in Canada, England, France, Germany, Prague and Spain — where I delivered eight #talks and presented nine #posters.

🧬 🌍 During my time in #Dundee, I learned an incredible amount from my excellent supervisors, mentors, examiners, thesis committee, colleagues and friends. My work led to four first-author peer-reviewed #publications, one preprint and another manuscript currently in preparation.

I returned in 2019 to pursue a #Master's degree internship in the @bartongrp.bsky.social at the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, followed by a #PhD studentship from 2020 to 2025 and a short #postdoctoral position.

🎓 📚 Last month, I was awarded my PhD degree by the University of Dundee. This marked the end of my 10-year journey as a student and closed an important chapter of my life in Dundee — a journey that began in 2017 as an #Erasmus exchange undergraduate student.

Links here!

📜 : doi.org/10.1093/nar/...
🔗 : www.compbio.dundee.ac.uk/ligysis/
🗃️ : github.com/bartongroup/...

Thanks again to #BBSRC, #EASTBIO and #SLS Dundee for funding. @gjbarton.bsky.social, @stuartmac44.bsky.social and everyone else who helped in this project. Also the users that are already using it and providing us with excellent feedback. And, of course, to the NAR team for choosing our figure!

LIGYSIS-web relies on 3Dmol.js by @dkoes.compstruct.org to explore the #interactions between #proteins and relevant #ligands and deliver rich output including evolutionary #divergence across homologues, enrichment in human genetic #variation, solvent #accessibility and a #functional score!

The @narjournal.bsky.social Annual Web Server Issue is now finalised. Congratulations to all other authors for their excellent resources.

I am thrilled to share that one of our #LIGYSIS-web paper figures was selected as the cover image for this issue. Check it out here: lnkd.in/dXAb6jwv!

🎙️ Thanks to everyone that helped on this project: Nicola Wood, Thomas Macartney, MRC PPU Reagents and Services, Dundee Uni DTS, @bartongrp.bsky.social, @jalview.bsky.social team, James Abbot and also @martinsteinegger.bsky.social and his team for the excellent #ColabFold implementation!

🔑 Our findings demonstrate the utility of our #computational #methods to #uncover #functional #residues on proteins based on fragment-binding sites.

📜 FRAGSYS: tinyurl.com/utges-fragsys

🧫 Beautiful experimental work led by Diane Lee uncovered two mutations on #FAM83G that abolish SACK1G-CK1α interaction, thus disrupting #WNT signalling, in a similar manner as previously reported #PPK pathogenic variants.

💻 Using the fragment screening data provided by our #FRAGSYS pipeline, combined with high quality #Google #Deepmind #AlphaFold #Multimer (ColabFold) models of the SACK1G dimer, we identified and prioritised 13 residues in a binding site of interest as likely functionally relevant.

🚀 For this study, @gjbarton.bsky.social and I teamed up with the group of Gopal #Sapkota at @mrcppu.bsky.social in the School of Life Sciences of Dundee Uni to shed some light in the loss of interaction between #SACK1G and #CK1α, which underlies the pathogenesis of #Palmoplantar #Keratoderma (PPK).