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BMB Blog

Blog for the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biotechnology at UMass Chan Medical School. Check here for updates about the achievements of our trainees, staff and faculty.

  • clover-cobratoxin GIF.gif

    St. Patrick's Day, Snakes and biochemiStry!

    Happy St. Patrick's Day! Join us to learn about the biochemistry of snake venoms, and how they might be used to treat a variety of human diseases!

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  • from Paul Thompson's lab, Structure of the Peptidyl arginine deiminase (PAD) 2 that catalyze the conversion of arginine residues to citrulline residues on target proteins in the presence of calcium ions.

    BMB highlights research on PAD enzymes for Autoimmune Disease Awareness Month

    For Autoimmune Disease Awareness Month, we are featuring the work of Dr. Paul Thompson in our department. The goal of his research is to develop drugs to inhibit a family of proteins called PAD's that play a major role in the pathology of many different autoimmune diseases.

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  • an illustration of purple epithelial cells on a white background. the group of cells are all sitting clustered together on strings representing the ecm.

    BMB celebrates the work of Dr. McCollum on Hippo Day 2023!

    Happy Hippo Day! The Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Department is celebrating by highlighting the work from one of our labs that studies Hippo signaling. No, not the animal, but the cellular signaling pathway that controls cell fate and organ size! Dr. Dan McCollum's lab studies how cells sense and process information from physical forces around them.

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  • on a light blue background, an image of a coronavirus on the left and an image of the main protease (Mpro) of most coronaviruses on the right

    Coming up with new ways to treat COVID-19 is at the *heart* of BMB.

    #newscience alert! Several groups in our department collaborated to characterize coronavirus proteases and compounds that could be used to inhibit them to prevent future outbreaks. In this special Valentine's Day post, you'll find highlights from these two publications and beautiful representations of a coronavirus protease that looks like a heart. We love biochemistry!

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