Sarah E Hancock

Gambling on the electricity market: summer heatwave edition

FTR I would totally have this student back for a PhD but she is international and we currently don't have any stipend funding support for her. I'm working on it but in the meantme actively supporting her other applications.

The worst, especially when you're on >1 app with multiple interruptions.

RIP James Watson. I'll always remember you as the dude berating the cafeteria staff at CSHL because they served turkey bacon on the open day.

Our very own newly minted PhD @jasmineleighb.bsky.social is the @victorchang.edu.au Star Scientist for November. Best of all, she's currently looking for postdoc opportunities for 2026. Hit her up if you think she might be a good fit for your lab. #teammassspec #obesity #nad 👩‍🔬🧪

Pretty much :)

Epoxidation-enhanced charge-switch derivatization for rapid profiling of monounsaturated fatty acid isomers Structural isomerism in monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) presents a persistent challenge in lipidomics due to limited chromatographic resolution and indistinguishable mass spectral profiles. Moreover, many methods that overcome these limitations require specialized instruments or complex photochemistry typically not accessible in for those using standard lipidomics core facilities. We report a streamlined LC-MS/MS method that integrates N-(4-aminomethylphenyl)pyridinium (AMP)-based charge-switch derivatization with meta-chloroperoxybenzoic acid (mCPBA) epoxidation to enable rapid and sensitive profiling of MUFA double bond positional isomers. Charge-switching enables enhanced detection of fatty acids while epoxidation improves chromatographic resolution and produces diagnostic fragmentation patterns upon collision-induced dissociation (CID), enabling precise localization of double bond positions. The optimized workflow achieves baseline separation of 16:1, 18:1, and 20:1 MUFA isomers within a 20-minute gradient, with reproducible retention times and consistent epoxide yields. The method also supports partial resolution of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and cis/trans isomers. Application to prostate cancer cell lines revealed distinct MUFA isomer profiles associated with aberrant fatty acid desaturase 2 (FADS2) activity, including elevated n-10 and n-12 isomers in tumorigenic lines. These results align with prior studies using other isomer-resolving techniques, validating the method’s analytical performance. This accessible and robust strategy expands the toolkit for lipidomics research, providing a method that is compatible with conventional LC-MS/MS workflows, positioning it as a practical solution for high-resolution isomer analysis in complex biological samples

I put this one up quietly on @chemrxiv.org before disappearing on annual leave for 3 weeks. It is a quick and useful technique for those of us who want to do isomer-resolved #lipidomics but don't have access to modified instruments. doi.org/10.26434/che... #teammassspec #massspec

Also, men who are invited to speak at these conferences: be good allies and speak up! Refuse the invitation or make your acceptance conditional on the organisers achieving gender parity. Suggest speakers from underrepresented groups that you know are great and don't get the recognition they deserve.

Underrepresented Scientists Directory The FeMS+ directory of underrepresented scientists is a resource for conferences, professional societies and journals in mass spectrometry and related fields to build diverse and inclusive panels o…

Resources:
@femalesinms.bsky.social Underrepresented Scientists Directory: femalesinms.com/underreprese...
@legidoquigley.bsky.social List of women in metabolomics, lipidomics, proteomics & related data science: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

To be honest, when I see conferences announced that have a majority of male invited speakers, I think the organisers are not trying hard enough. We have so many excellent #FemalesinMS and resources available there is really no excuse for it anymore #massspec #teammassspec #lipidomics #metabolomics

You can hear the Bells Miner birds in the background - we counted 18 in 20 mins for the Aussie Bird Count yesterday

Met this little fella at Hobart Beach National Park. Not shy at all.

How your email has found me this past week

My daughter asked for crocs today. I guess it's only a matter of time before she starts saying things like "water, like out the toilet?" and "it's got what plants crave".

Today I visited my kids preschool to talk about science for #nationalscienceweek2025. My mini-me and I talked about an experiment we did on germs 🦠. We talked about different kinds of scientists and asked the children what kind of scientist they would like to be

Does anyone in #lipid research know if Nu-check prep is still operating? Their website is down and I can't see anything on the wayback from the end of last year...

Gambling on the electricity market is paying off tonight

#Sydney CBD was super foggy this morning

Possibly the greatest compliment I'm going to receive today

The theme was Australiana so I tried to match the energy. Can't beat an AWW cake though - especially the highly coveted jelly pool cake

Ugh i have so many copies of different mass spec vendor software collected over the years that I'm afraid won't work with Win11.

My entry into today's @victorchang.edu.au annual bake-off - an iced vovo pavlova. Ended up coming second place - beaten by an Australian Women's Weekly jelly pool cake by 1 point

Judging a bake-off is a piece of cake for our group leader 🍰. Now back to the lab to check our blood sugars... @victorchang.edu.au 🧪

Anyone else getting "the dress" vibes from the carpet at the Cairns Convention Centre? #ausomics

Third speaker in this session was @cashwood.proteaglyco.com, giving a sweet talk on glycoprotein characterisation #TeamMassSpec #ausomics

Got to play around with this bad boy this morning, super pumped to see what it can do. #TeamMassSpec #massspec

Getting anything productive done in the first 6 months of having a baby is a massive feat, congrats.

Buy Daniel a beer at Aus-oMicS and he might tell you...

They put on a good show. Miss Nearly 5 had a great time but Miss Nearly 3 wanted to go home 15 mins in.

Back at the horden for an entirely different type of gig today