The Scott lab further expanded our holiday celebrations this year by adding a Festivus pole (far left). Lab member Dhanushka captured the current Scott lab group members with an original drawing. Check out more of Dhanushka's drawings.

Research by postdoctoral fellow Fernando Estrada was recognized as an outstanding contribution, as represented by a poster titled "Modulation of the steroidogenic cytochrome P450 17A1 structure via substrate and effector protein binding" at the 3rd Congress on Steroid Research in the Windy City.

Once again the GRASP meeting yielded a great opportunity to focus on protein NMR. Fernando gave an excellent talk titled "Analysis of the interaction between cytochrome P450 17A1 and the flavin mononucleotide domain of human reductase". Attendees from the Scott lab included (below right, from left to right): Elyse Petrunak, Aaron Bart, Malika Godamudunage, Fernando Estrada, Dr. Scott, and Rahul Yadav (not shown).

Dr. Scott and several other KU faculty presented research in STEM fields to 200 area high school students at the Business of STEM Skills to Achieve Symposium, sponsored by Junior Achievement.

Postdoc Elyse Petrunak visited colleagues Dr. Jeff Aubé and Caleb Vogt at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Eschelman School of Pharmacy to collaborate on CYP17A1 steroid assays.

The NIH selected our grant on Cytochrome P450 Structure and Function for a MERIT award, providing the opportunity to gain up to ten years of support. Read a lay description of the proposed work of the main thrust of research in the Scott lab in the news release here.

Fernando Estrada led tours of students in the Life Sciences Program at Olathe North High School through the Scott lab to show them how science is really done (but only after a little lab cleanup!).

The Scott lab welcomes postdoctoral fellow Rahul Yadav. Rahul comes form the laboratory of Moriah Beck at Wichita State University where he worked on NMR spectroscopy of the protein palladin.

Second-year Molecular Biosciences graduate student Aaron Bart presented his recent NMR work at the annual Graduate Student Symposium in the Kansas Union.

Fall 2015 brought several new undergraduate faces to the Scott lab. Cara Davis (far left) is a freshman Honors student learning an array of basic laboratory skills from various current lab members. Eder Davila-Contreras (middle) is a McNair Scholar Biochemistry major learning protein expression and purification working with postdoc Fernando Estrada. Nick Martinez (far right) is a part-time KU student who returned to the Scott lab to work with graduate student Aaron Bart.

(Left to right) Medicinal Chemistry faculty Ryan Altman, Tom Prisinzano, Brian Blagg, Emily Scott, Blake Peterson and lab instructor Judy Wu welcome the incoming P1 Pharmacy students.

The Scott lab attended a two-day workshop presented by Phenix Consortium Developers Paul Adams, Tom Terwilliger, Pavel Afonine, and Nigel Moriarty on getting the maximum out of the Phenix software for protein structure determination.

Congratulations to Medicinal Chemistry Ph.D. student Elyse Petrunak, who successfully defended her dissertation work titled "Structural and Functinal Evaluation of Steroidogenic Cytochrome P450 Enzymes".

Ever feel like you are trapped with your labmates? Well the Scott lab group really was! We divided into two teams to see which could find their way out of a locked room puzzle in 60 minutes or less by cracking codes and solving riddles. Though these are techniques we use in the lab all the time, we were much less successful on this particular day.

Fernando, Youbin, Aggi, Nick, and Dhanushka challenged the room called "Szechuan Secret" (above left). Aaron, Elyse, Silvia, Malika, and Dr. Scott tried their problem-solving skills to take on "Room 13" (above right).

Silvia Bonomo is a visiting graduate student in the Scott lab for part of this summer. Her lab home is with Drs. Flemming Steen Jorgensen and Lars Olsen in the Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology at the University of Copenhagen. She has used computational approaches to screen for possible inhibitors of the human steroidogenic CYP17A1 and is visiting us to determine if these compounds indeed bind and inhibit the enzyme. Welcome Silvia!

Aggi Walsh and Dr. Scott took part in a 2-day workshop on teaching practices run by the KU Center for Teaching Excellence. Dr. Scott used the opportunity to redesign MDCM 601: Medicinal Biochemistry for the Pharmacy students, while Aggi used the skills gained to get off to a great start teaching BIOL 600: Introductory Biochemistry in fall 2015.

Senior graduate student Elyse Petrunak presented a short talk and a poster at the annual meeting of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Biology (ASPET) held as part of Experimental Biology in Boston, MA. Elyse's attendance was partially supported by a travel award from ASPET.

Postdoctoral fellow Fernando Estrada, now working on vitamin D metabolism as part of his K99 award, attended the 18th Workshop on Vitamin D in Delft, Netherlands April 21-24.

Postdoctoral fellows Aggi Walsh, Malika Godamudunage, and Fernando Estrada volunteered their time to visit area schools and present interactive lessons on DNA topics and share their enthusiasm for science. Thanks for volunteering guys!

The lab surprised me with cake to celebrate a recent promotion to full professor. I love that the "FE" that drives P450 enzymology is also in the center of "professor" and has flames coming out of it on the cake.

We're looking forward to a new addition to the lab as postdoc Malika and spouse Kasun expect a beautiful baby girl.

Undergraduate student Tyler Stone has joined the lab to get exposure to basic science research. Tyler is currently a P1 Pharm.D. student here at KU. Welcome Tyler!