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Tag: Chris West

UGA biochemists create new tool to study biological process in parasites

Donna Huber on May 8, 2025

Click on image below to view photo gallery with captions. Researchers in the University of Georgia’s West Laboratory are interested in how unicellular parasites thrive in their environments. Focusing on post-translational modifications of proteins, particularly a crucial process called glycosylation, researchers are gaining insights into how this basic life process in parasites can lead to better …

Synergy between a cytoplasmic vWFA/VIT protein and a WD40-repeat F-box protein controls development in Dictyostelium

Donna Huber on September 14, 2023

Like most eukaryotes, the pre-metazoan social amoeba Dictyostelium depends on the SCF (Skp1/cullin-1/F-box protein) family of E3 ubiquitin ligases to regulate its proteome. In Dictyostelium, starvation induces a transition from unicellular feeding to a multicellular slug that responds to external signals to culminate into a fruiting body containing terminally differentiated stalk and spore cells. These transitions are subject …

Glycomics, Glycoproteomics and Glycogenomics: an Inter-Taxa Evolutionary Perspective

Donna Huber on September 29, 2020

Glycosylation is a highly diverse set of co- and post-translational modification of proteins. For mammalian glycoproteins, glycosylation is often site-, tissue- and species-specific, and diversified by microheterogeneity. Multitudinous biochemical, cellular, physiological and organismic effects of their glycans have been revealed, either intrinsic to the carrier proteins or mediated by endogenous reader proteins with carbohydrate recognition …

A terminal α3-galactose modification regulates an E3 ubiquitin ligase subunit in Toxoplasma gondii

Donna Huber on May 15, 2020

Skp1, a subunit of E3 Skp1/Cullin-1/F-box protein ubiquitin ligases, is modified by a prolyl hydroxylase that mediates O2-regulation of the social amoeba Dictyostelium and the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. The full effect of hydroxylation requires modification of the hydroxyproline by a pentasaccharide that, in Dictyostelium, influences Skp1 structure to favor assembly of Skp1/F-box protein subcomplexes. In Toxoplasma, the presence of a contrasting …

Trainee Spotlight: Msano Mandalasi

Donna Huber on October 31, 2017

Msano Mandalasi, a post-doctoral trainee in Chris West‘s laboratory, is originally from Malawi, (located in southeastern Africa) and obtained her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Malawi. After graduation, she worked briefly for the University of Malawi and then came to the US to obtain a Master’s degree in Chemistry. Later, she enrolled in a …