Category Archives: Publications

FIRST HEISLER LAB PUBLICATION!

Today, our efforts, in collaboration with Dr. Thomas Montgomery (Duquesne) was published in ACS Organic & Inorganic Au (DOI: 10.1021/acsorginorgau.5c00098). The Montgomery group was interested in a novel synthetic pathway for producing 1,2,4-Triazolidines with multiple different substitutions.

Given the involvement of triazolidines in diverse bioactivities, we found that many of these compound possess antibacterial properties. Led undergraduate Trista Newman, this project has spurred new questions and avenues of research lead by PhD student Elias Griffin.

First Preprint goes live!

Today, the first preprint that the Heisler lab has had the honor contribute their expertise towards has gone live. A collaboration with Rita Mihailescu’s lab here at Duquesne shows the importance of DNA secondary structures in the regulation of the 5′ untranslated region (5’UTR) of a gene implicated in multiple sclerosis. Morgan (PhD student) and Zoe (NSF-REU and NIH-NURE student) contributed all of the molecular and cell biology in the paper!

 

DOI: 10.1101/2025.11.24.690261

Crystal Structures of Ceg10 – A labor of Love

Crystal Structure of Ceg10

Today, the crystal structure of Ceg10, an effector protein from Legionella was deposited and released at the RSCB Protein Data Bank (PDB). While a lot remains to be determined about its function and targets during an infection, we are excited to finally release some of what we have learned about this protein in the last 8 years! The Ceg10 crystal structures are part of a collaborative project between Dr. Heisler’s lab and the Gammon, Alto, and Taglialucci lab’s at UT Southwestern Medical School.

More about what Ceg10 does during a viral infection can be found in a recent preprint: Exploiting Bacterial Effector Proteins to Uncover Evolutionarily Conserved Antiviral Host Machinery
The crystal structures can be found at the RSCD PDB: 9B8D and 9B8E

New Paper out in Nature Microbiology

FEAR Pathway

Published today in Nature Microbiology, a massive collaboration lead by “fear”less graduate student Emily Rex in the Gammon lab identifies a new pathway for restricting viral pathogens and how some viruses attempt to evade this pathway. More can be found at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-024-01646-5.epdf?sharing_token=scTW3uKvkhn77dxbSmqu59RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PtJOB0uazhwtp9ry6BHEUNjpgTszmdaCSu_Nf9eB9lAyknydEiu__2sDUwM0iG8EUbIJGY3RbQovhdc6-guMR3hCQJ2aNLgP1odVuOxusrG-J3kvf2297z1uGSL2XXcQA%3D