Jennifer L. Martin

Jenny Martin

Professor Jenny Martin is a Lab Head at The University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience
Nationality Australian
Institutions Victorian College of Pharmacy
University of Oxford
Bond University
Rockefeller University
University of Queensland
Alma mater Victorian College of Pharmacy
(B Pharm, M Pharm)
Oxford University (PhD)
Doctoral advisor Peter Goodford
Louise Johnson

Professor Jennifer L. (Jenny) Martin is an ARC Laureate Fellow, an honorary NHMRC Fellow, a laboratory head in the Chemistry and Structural Biology Division[1] of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience and an Affiliate Professor in the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences at the University of Queensland. Her research expertise and interests lie in the areas of structural biology, protein crystallography, protein interactions and their applications in drug design.

Education

Martin completed a Bachelor of Pharmacy at the Victorian College of Pharmacy in Melbourne from 1979–1981, receiving the Gold Medal for the best student in the B Pharm course. After spending a year as a trainee pharmacist, she completed a Masters in Pharmacy, supervised by Professor Peter Andrews, on the application of computational chemistry to opioid analgesics, which piqued her interest in research and led to her first scientific publications.[2][3] She then left Australia to undertake a PhD at the University of Oxford supported by a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Science Research Scholarship. Under the guidance of Professors Peter Goodford and Louise Johnson, her PhD research used protein crystallography to design glycogen phosphorylase inhibitors as potential anti-diabetic compounds.[4][5] Martin recently paid tribute to the positive influence that Louise Johnson had on her career upon her death in 2012.[6]

Scientific career

After completing her PhD she returned briefly to Australia to take up a post-doctoral position at Bond University in 1990. However, the unexpected closure of the School of Science and Technology resulted in her leaving Australia once again to take up a post-doctoral position with Professor John Kuriyan, a structural biologist, at Rockefeller University in New York to work on the disulfide bond forming family of proteins (DSBs) in Escherichia coli. She solved the structure of the DsbA protein which was published in 1993 in the high impact journal Nature.[7]

DsbA crystals growing in a drop of protein solution

In 1993 Martin received an Australian Research Council Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship which enabled her to return to Australia and establish the first protein crystallography lab in Queensland, which is now known as the UQ Remote Operation Crystallisation and X-ray Diffraction (UQ ROCX) Facility of which Martin is currently the Director.[8] Since then she has remained at the University of Queensland supported by other fellowships. She was awarded an ARC Senior Research Fellowship in 1999, an NHMRC Senior Research Fellowship in 2007 and, in 2009, Martin was one of just 15 researchers, and only two women, to receive an inaugural ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship.[9][10]

Crystal structure of DsbA - yellow spheres show the active site disulfide in the protein

Since returning to Australia and establishing her own research group, Martin has continued working on DSB proteins and is now developing inhibitors of these bacterial proteins as a potential means of combatting antibiotic resistance.[11][12] She also began working on other proteins including phenylethanolamine N-methyl transferase (PNMT), an enzyme that catalyses adrenalin synthesis. Martin published the structure of this enzyme[13] and later, as part of her ongoing research into different PNMT substrate-bound complexes, she became the first remote access user of the Australian Synchrotron.[14] Over the past 10 years, she has also contributed significantly to the structural biology of membrane fusion,[15][16][17] a fundamentally important process that underpins systems as diverse as neurotransmission and blood glucose control. She wrote an invited commentary for The Conversation in 2013 on this topic,[18] and was invited to present a keynote lecture on her membrane fusion research at the 23rd triennial International Union of Crystallography Congress held in Montreal in 2014.[19]

Honours and leadership roles

In addition to the research fellowships she has been awarded during her career, Martin has also received several honours in recognition of her professional contributions including:

Martin has also held a number of leadership roles on national and international committees. She is a former chair of the National Committee for Crystallography of the Australian Academy of Science (2008-2011), a past President of the Society for Crystallographers in Australia and New Zealand (2003-2005) and a former member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Australian Synchrotron (2002-2009).

Advocacy and science communication

In more recent years Martin has emerged as a strong advocate for equal opportunity and addressing gender imbalance in academia. She published a letter in the prestigious journal Nature calling for scientific conference organisers to be more transparent with respect to their gender-balance policies and historical data.[25] This inspired Dr Kat Holt to develop a website, "Look Who's Talking",[26] that presents crowdsourced data on gender balance at scientific conferences held in Australia. Martin also writes a blog [27] which focuses on issues relating to women in academia, and she is a member of the recently formed Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) Forum Steering Committee,[28] an initiative of the Australian Academy of Science that aims to address the under-representation of women in science, particularly at senior positions in universities.

Martin also contributes to science communication initiatives to help a wider audience understand her scientific fields of interest. She has participated in events such as BrisScience,[29] which runs public lectures on science and technology; SCOM BOMB,[30] a Google hangout operated by the Australian Science Communicators, Science Rewired and the Centre for the Public Awareness of Science as part of the No Funny Business science communication website;[31] and the 2014 UNESCO International Year of Crystallography, including a radio interview[32] and public lecture.[33] She also writes articles for The Conversation,[34] an independent, online source of news and views from the academic and research community.

Personal life

Martin grew up in a large family of 9 children in Dandenong, Victoria. She currently resides in Brisbane with her husband Michael.[35]

References

  1. ↑ Institute of Molecular Bioscience Lab Heads
  2. ↑ Andrews PR, Craik DJ and Martin JL, Functional group contributions to drug-receptor interactions, J Med Chem (1984) 27:1648
  3. ↑ Martin J and Andrews P, Conformation-activity relationships of opiate analgesics, J Comput Aided Mol Des (1987) 1:53
  4. ↑ Martin JL, Johnson LN and Withers SG, Comparison of the binding of glucose and glucose 1-phosphate derivatives to T-state glycogen phosphorylase b, Biochemistry (1990) 29:10745
  5. ↑ Martin JL, Veluraja K, Ross K, Johnson LN, Fleet GW, Ramsden NG, Bruce I, Orchard MG, Oikonomakos NG, Papageorgiou AC, Leonidas DD and Tsitoura HS, Glucose analogue inhibitors of glycogen phosphorylase: the design of potential drugs for diabetes, Biochemistry (1991) 30:10101
  6. ↑ Obituary for Professor Dame Louise Johnson: a personal perspective from a former student
  7. ↑ Martin JL, Bardwell JC and Kuriyan J, Crystal structure of the DsbA protein required for disulphide bond formation in vivo, Nature (1993) 363:464
  8. ↑ UQ Remote Operation Crystallisation and X-ray Diffraction (UQ ROCX) Facility
  9. ↑ UQ News: UQ awarded more than $5M in Australian Laureate Fellowships
  10. ↑ Biographies of 2009 Australian Laureate Fellows
  11. ↑ Heras B#, Shouldice SR, Totsika M, Scanlon MJ, Schembri M and Martin JL#, Dsb proteins and bacterial pathogenicity, Nature Rev Microbiol (2009) 7:215
  12. ↑ Kurth F, Duprez W, Premkumar L, Schembri M, Fairlie DP and Martin JL, Crystal structure of the dithiol oxidase DsbA enzyme from Proteus mirabilis bound non-covalently to an active site peptide ligand, J Biol Chem (2014) 289:19810
  13. ↑ Martin JL, Begun J, McLeish MJ, Caine JM and Grunewald GL, Getting the adrenaline going: crystal structure of the adrenaline-synthesizing enzyme PNMT, Structure (2001) 9:977
  14. ↑ Lightspeed - Australian Synchrotron News: More than remotely interesting
  15. ↑ Hu S-H, Latham CF, Gee CL, James DE and Martin JL, Structure of the Munc18c/Syntaxin4 N- peptide complex defines universal features of the N-peptide binding mode of SM proteins, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (2007) 104:8773
  16. ↑ Hu S-H*, Christie MP*, Saez NJ, Latham CF, Jarrott R, Lua LHL, Collins BM and Martin JL, Possible roles for Munc18-1 domain 3a and Syntaxin1 N-peptide and C-anchor in SNARE complex formation, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (2011) 108:1040
  17. ↑ Christie MP*, Whitten AE*#, King GJ, Hu S-H, Jarrott RJ, Chen K-E, Duff AP, Callow P, Collins BM, James DE, Martin JL# "Low-resolution solution structures of Munc18:Syntaxin complexes indicate an open binding mode driven by Syntaxin N-peptide" Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (2012) 109:9816
  18. ↑ Bread, beer and botox: the science behind the 2013 Nobel Prize for medicine, The Conversation, 8 October 2013
  19. ↑ IUCr 2014 Keynote Lecture - The mystery of membrane fusion: structural biology of Munc18 proteins; 10 August 2014; Montreal, Quebec, Canada
  20. ↑ ASBMB website: The 2005 Roche Medal
  21. ↑ IMB News: Top Award to IMB Researcher
  22. ↑ 9th Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lecture: Professor Jenny Martin, The name's Bond.....Disulphide Bond, University Museum, Oxford, 6 March 2007
  23. ↑ Lady Masson Lecture 2010 at the University of Melbourne
  24. ↑ IMB News: Researchers shine at Women in Technology Awards
  25. ↑ Martin JL, Sexism: Conferences should seek a balance, Nature (2014) 493:305
  26. ↑ Look Who's Talking website: Gender balance in scientific conferences (Australia)
  27. ↑ cubistcrystal: Jenny Martin's blog
  28. ↑ Australian Academy of Science: SAGE Forum
  29. ↑ BrisScience: UQ Research Week 2013 "How are new medicines discovered?"
  30. ↑ SCOM BOMB – Jenny Martin, Crystallographer
  31. ↑ No Funny Business science communication website
  32. ↑ 612 ABC Brisbane: 2014 is International Year of Crystallography
  33. ↑ University of Melbourne, Faculty of Science: International Year of Crystallography 2014
  34. ↑ Jenny Martin - The Conversation
  35. ↑ Royal Australian Chemical Chemical Institute - IYCr Lecture Series: Professor Jenny Martin - 27 Mar 2014

External links

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