In The News

December 2023
Our paper describing the clamp loading mechanism in E. coli is available here on biorxiv. We find surprising differences in in the clamp loading mechanism of bacteria and eukaryotes. Congrats to first author Jake and co-authors Josh, Emma and Emily! 

Our collaborative paper with the Thomson Lab at UMass Chan Neurobiology is available here on biorxiv. We find that the Drosophila Copia retrotransposon forms T=9 capsids, which antagonize the Arc protein for proper regulation of synaptic plasticitiy. Congrats to co-first author Yumeng Liu of the Kelch Lab, as well as all of the Thomson Lab!

November 2023
Dr Yumeng Liu exits the Kelch lab to start a position at the University of Wisconsin Cryo-EM Facility. Congrats!! We're gonna miss you, Yumeng! 

October 2023
Two rotation students, Emily Norman and Sylvester Kaminta, join us for the next three 6 weeks. Welcome!

July 2023
A new high school intern, Emma Flaherty, joins us for the summer. Welcome Emma!

June 2023
Joe Magrino is awarded the Student Community Service Leadership Award! Congrats Joe!!

A new undergraduate intern, Joshua Kortschinsky, joins us for the summer. Welcome Josh!

Emma Sedivy presents her work at the Phage and Virus Assembly Meeting. Great job Emma!

May 2023
Grad students Rakeyah Ahsan and Krishna Anand join the Kelch Lab! Very exciting! Welcome!

Brian is awarded the UMass Chan Research Mentoring Award!

Our work is highlighted on the cover of JBC! Check it out here (click thumbnail for higher res):
 
Thanks to Leonora Martínez-Nuñez, PhD for generating this beautiful image!

April 2023
Joe's paper describing how thermo-labile PCNA variants lead to human disease is accepted at JBC! Please go read the paper here.
Again, our paper is chosen to be highlighted by ASBMB in a special article! Please go read the article here. Congrats to Joe and to our wonderful co authors at the University of São Paulo.

March 2023 (big month in the Kelch Lab)
Grad student Emily Agnello defends her thesis work. Congrats Dr. Agnello!!

Grad student Joe Magrino defends his thesis work. Congrats Dr. Magrino!!

Grad student Xingchen Liu defends her thesis work. Congrats Dr. Liu!!

(Whew! Three students defending their thesis in a little over a week! That might be a record!)

Emily's paper describing how phage tails polymerize is accepted at JBC. Please go read it here. Emily's paper was chosen to be highlighted by ASBMB in a special article. Please go read the article on the Rapunzel Virus here. Congrats to authors Emily and Josh!

Rakeyah Ahsan begins her rotation in the lab. Welcome Rakeyah!

January 2023
1st year grad student Krishna Anand begins her rotation in the lab. Welcome Krishna!

November 2022
Grad student Xingchen Liu presents her work at the 27th Annual UMass Chan Research Retreat.

October 2022
Two new rotation students, Khanh Tran and Kim Anh Vu, join the Kelch Lab for the next rotation period! Welcome!!

Our paper describing the structure and assembly of the super-long tail of phage P74-26 is published on biorxiv. Read it here. Congrats to the authors, especially first author Emily Agnello!

Post-doc Josh Pajak earns a Fellowship from the American Cancer Society! Congrats Josh!

Our new paper describing how disease mutations in PCNA cause a rare DNA repair disorder is now live here on MedRxiv. We find that PCNA thermo-sensitivity underlies the DNA repair defect. Congrats to all authors, especially first author Joe!

September 2022
The Kelch Lab is awarded a new R01 grant from NIGMS!!! Woohoo!

A new review on RFC function from BK and friends Mike O'Donnell and Huilin Li is published in BioEssays!

Meg Stratton ends her sabbatical. We are sooooo sad to see Totes go!

August 2022
Postbac student Erick Torres-Guasp and summer undergraduate researcher Jake Glicksman leave after successful stops in the Kelch lab! Jake wins one of the poster prizes for best summer undergrad presentation! Erick is off to grad school at University of Chicago, and Jake is back at BU. Thanks for the great times!

July 2022
BK becomes the Director of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biotechnology Graduate Program.

Emily presents her work at the FASEB Virus Assembly Meeting! Great job, Emily!

June 2022
Our paper describing how RFC loads at DNA nicks for repair is officially published at eLife! 
We also a contributed to this nice paper in Cell Reports from our close friends in the Stratton Lab!

Summer undergraduate researcher Jake Glicksman joins! Welcome!

The Joint UMass Chan/Amherst Biochemistry Retreat is co-organized by BK and Totes Stratton! BK wins the pie-eating contest (some dreams do come true!!) and Emily Agnello presents her awesome work!

February 2022
The Kelch Lab publishes a new preprint on biorxiv describing how the clamp loader RFC uses a second DNA binding site to load PCNA at gapped or nicked DNA for DNA repair! 

Our other RFC paper is officially published at eLife!
Congrats Xingchen and Christl on a double whammy of greatness!

January 2022
Our friend Meg Stratton (Associate Professor at UMass Amherst) temporarily joins the Kelch lab to do a sabbatical! Welcome Totes!!

November 2021
Grad student Emily Agnello presents her work at the Annual UMass Chan Research Retreat! Congrats Emily!

October 2021
Bittersweet as Postdoc extraordinaire Christl Gaubitz heads off to University of Copenhagen! We'll miss you!

September 2021
The Kelch Lab publishes a new preprint on biorxiv describing how the clamp loader RFC opens and loads the sliding clamp PCNA onto primer-template DNA!

August 2021
The Kelch Lab welcomes new post-baccalaureate student Erick Torres-Guasp. Erick recently obtained his baccalaureate degree in Industrial Chemistry at University of Puerto Rico, Humancao. Erick earned his post-baccalaureate position through as supplemental award to The Kelch Lab’s National Science Foundation grant. Welcome Erick!

July 2021
Dr. Joshua Pajack joins the Kelch Lab!!!

June 2021
The Kelch Lab makes contributions to another paper in Nucleic Acids Research from the Arya, Morais, and Jardine groups describing how packaging motor ATPases are regulated. The lead author is Josh Pajack, soon to be Kelch Lab postdoc!

Summer undergraduate researcher Josephine Essuman comes back to the Kelch Lab for the summer! Very excited to have Josephine back! Welcome!

April 2021
Dr. Yumeng Liu joins the Kelch Lab!!!

March 2021
The Kelch Lab makes contributions to a paper in PNAS from the Arya, Morais, and Jardine groups describing how packaging motor ATPases are regulated. 

Grad student extraordinaire Joe Magrino earns an F31 Fellowship from the National Cancer Institute!! Congrats Joe!!!

February 2021
Our friends in Cantor lab at UC Berkeley publishes a paper in Molecular Cancer Research describing mutations in the DNA helicase FANCJ with contributions from BK. 

January 2021
The Marqusee lab at UC Berkeley publishes a paper in Biochemistry with contributions from BK (from 15 years prior!). 

September 2020
The first structure of the human clamp loader RFC is published in PNAS! Congrats co-first authors Christl and Xingchen!

July 2020
Emma Sedivy PhD, a recent graduate from the Grossman Lab at MIT, joins the lab! Welcome Emma!

Brian is granted tenure! UMass Chan and BMP are stuck with me now, suckas!!

Emily Agnello, Xingchen Liu and Jacob Landeck all successfully become PhD candidates, after enduring the world’s longest qualifying exam experience! 

June 2020
The Lab restarts limited in-person operation.

May 2020
The Lab earns a Worcester Foundation Award to help fight SARS-CoV-2. 

April 2020
2nd year grad student Emily Agnello earns a prestigious NSF Predoctoral Fellowship! Congrats!!!

Brian had to cancel seminar visits to Temple, Michigan State, and Vanderbilt! Sad, but it was the obvious call. Hopefully, we’ll get to visit in the future!!

March 2020
The Lab shuts down in-person operation due to COVID-19. Stay safe everyone.

We didn’t realize it, but this was the last time we will have fantastic Worcester Technical High School student Josephine Essuman in the lab. Due to the global pandemic, we can no longer support in-person training of high school or undergraduate students in the labs. But we know that  Josephine will shine at UMass Boston in the fall! Congrats on a fantastic job, Josephine!

February 2020
Brian gives a seminar at Saint Louis University. Thank you to Edwin Antony for hosting for a wonderful visit!

Christl Gaubitz's & Xingchen Liu’s joint authored paper hits BiorXiv! They describe the first structure of the human clamp loader, which reveals a conserved, auto-inhibited conformation. Congrats to all the authors! 

January 2020
Both Nick and Janelle leave the lab to start their careers! Congrats to these two stellar scientists! 

Janelle’s paper is accepted at JBC! 

November 2019
A new preprint from the lab is live here.

We describe the structure of small terminase protein a thermophilic phage, which shows that the helix-turn-helix domains have a fixed geometry. This has major implications for TerL- and DNA-binding. Congrats to all, especially first author Janelle! 

October 2019
Dr. Janelle Hayes gives a presentation at the 4th New England Cryo-EM Symposium.  

September 2019
Grad student Janelle Hayes successfully defends her thesis! Congrats Dr. Hayes. 

Christl Gaubitz gave a great oral presentation at the Cold Spring Harbor Lab Eukaryotic DNA Replication Meeting, and Joe Magrino presented a poster.

July 2019
Lab member Nick Stone is a graduate student no more! Nick did a stellar job and defended his thesis on July 9th. Congrats Dr. Stone!

Nick’s paper is accepted at Nature Communications! Double congrats Nick! 

BK presents at the Phage and Virus Assembly Meeting in Minnesota. 

June 2019
Grad student Xingchen Liu joins the lab! Welcome to the lab Xingchen! 

May 2019 
Postdoc extraordinaire Christl Gaubitz presents her work at the New England CryoEM Meeting.

April 2019 
BK presents the lab’s work at both Northwestern and Tufts Universities. 

March 2019
Grad Student Jacob Landeck joins the lab! Welcome to the lab Jake! 

February 2019
Emily Agnello joins the lab! Welcome to the lab Emily! 

January 2019 
The Kelch Lab was awarded a 5 year R01 grant entitled "Structural mechanisms of sliding clamp loader ATPases" from the National Institutes of Health on February 1st, 2019.

The Kelch Lab was also awarded an R21 grant from the National Institutes of Health, specifically the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease titled "Structural mechanism of a DNA polymerase critical for developing antibioticresistance" on February 1st, 2019.  

We will be using the state-of-the-art high-resolution cryoEM facility at UMass Chan to determine structures of these complexes. Work on these projects has already begun and we are looking to hire additional help for each project. Any interested Postdoc should send a letter of interest and a CV to Dr Kelch directly at Brian.Kelch@umassmed.edu 

January 2019
BK presents at the GRC Physical Virology Meeting in Ventura CA.  

November 2018
1st year grad student Jacob Landeck rotates in the lab. Welcome Jacob! 

November 2018 
Nick’s 2.8Å cryoEM structure of a thermophilic phage capsid is deposited on biorxiv. This is the lab’s first (of many) cryoEM structures to hit the market. Read about it here. 

August 2018
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awards a 5 year grant to the Kelch lab. The grant funds the lab’s work on virus genome packaging motors, which are exceptionally powerful motors that are important drug targets in herpesviruses. The award also funds BK’s outreach efforts with area Worcester high schools. For more about the outreach, read about it in this article here. 

July 2018
Nick’s paper on phage decoration protein structure, stability and evolution is published in Structure. See it here. 

Nick was trying to get the cover with this awesome cover art from co-author Brendan Hilbert. Unfortunately, Structure decided against this cover, but you can enjoy it here. 

 

July 2018
BK presents at the Protein Society Meeting in Boston, and FASEB Virus Assembly meeting in Steamboat Springs CO. 

June 2018 
1st year grad student Emily Agnello does a summer rotation in the Kelch lab. Emily comes from our buddies in the Stratton Lab at UMass Amherst, so we know she already is great. Welcome Emily! 

May 2018
The Kelch lab’s collaborative work with the Schiffer lab is published in Scientific Reports. Congrats to the ever-awesome T. Silvas and all other co-authors. See the paper here. 

April 2018
BK presents at the University of Arizona and Pew Scholars Meeting. Thanks to UofA Biochemistry students for the invite!

Also, Kelch Lab grad student Janelle Hayes presents her work at the ASBMB Annual Meeting in San Diego CA. Great Job Janelle! 

March 2018 
First year grad student Joe Magrino joins the lab. Woohoo! Welcome Joe! 

Also, postdoc extraordinaire Christl Gaubitz is awarded an Advanced Postdoc Mobility Fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation! Congrats Christl!!

November 2017
Nick Stone’s preprint on phage decoratiton protein structure, stability and evolution goes online at bioRxiv. You can see it here.  

October 2017 
Kelch Lab grad student Nick Stone wins poster award at the 14th Annual North Eastern Structure Symposium held at UConn. Congrats Nick! 

September 2017
BK presents the work of the lab at University of Connecticut Health Center and Brandeis University. Thanks to invitations from Dmitry Korzhnev and Timo Street! 

August 2017 
1st year students Joe Magrino and Shivani Nanda begin their rotations in the Kelch Lab. Welcome! 

August 2017
Grad student Nick Stone presents at the XXV Conference on Phage/Virus Assembly. Great job Nick! 

May 2017 
BK presents the work of the lab at Johns Hopkins University. Thanks to the invitation from Christian Kaiser and Bob Johnston. 

April 2017 
BK presents the work of the lab at Wesleyan University. Thanks to invitation from Manju Hingorani.

BK also presents on virus motor mechanism at the ASBMB Annual meeting in Chicago. 

April 2017
Kelch lab’s collaborative work with the Schiffer lab is published in Nature Communications. Congrats to T. Kuono and all other co-authors. See the paper here. 

March 2017
Grad student Janelle Hayes is awarded an NRSA predoctoral fellowship in recognition of her great accomplishments and potential as a budding scientist! 
Congrats, Janelle! 

January 2017
Brendan Hilbert, postdoc extraordinaire, scores a sweet job as a Scientist at Genzyme! Sad for us, great for Brendan, and even better for Genzyme! 
Bon Voyage, Brendan! 

December 2016
Our paper on terminase interactions with DNA and nuclease regulation is published in Nucleic Acids Research. Read it here. 

November 2016
Janelle scores in the top 6% on her F31 NRSA fellowship application. Congrats Janelle! 

October 2016
Brian is recognized by the American Cancer Society with an ACS Research Scholar Award! Read about it here. 

October 2016
Our first prepint goes live on BioRxiv! We determine that the terminase motor functions by binding DNA primarily through its ATPase domain, and flexible linkage to the nucelase domain provides a simple mechanism of nuclease regulation. Download it here. 

October 2016
The Massachusetts Center for High-Resolution Cryo-EM officially opens with a great CryoEM Symposium! Woohoo! Learn about it  here. 

September 2016
1st year grad student Sarah Davis rotates in the lab. Welcome Sarah! 

August 2016
Caroline Duffy PhD joins Sanofi Genzyme! We'll miss ya Duff! 

July 2016
Caroline Duffy successfully defends her thesis work. First Kelch Lab PhD granted!! 

Woohoo!! Congrats Duff! 

June 2016
Christl Gaubitz PhD joins us as the newest Kelch Lab member. Christl comes from University of Geneva where she worked with Robbie Loewith on TOR complex structure/function. Welcome Christl! 

Daniel Hidalgo joins us as a rotation student. Welcome Daniel! 

May 2016
Brendan Hilbert wins the Postdoctoral Mentoring Award for his work mentoring trainees such as grad students and other postdocs (and even some faculty!). A well deserved award! See it here 

April 2016
Duffy's paper on PCNA gets the cover of JMB. Lord of the rings style! JMB calls it "one of the best covers we've ever published." See it here