Pseudokinases

Dr. Natalia Jura is an Associate Professor and an Investigator in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at the Cardiovascular Research Institute within the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is also an Associate Director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute at UCSF.Dr. Jura's group at UCSF focuses on understanding how soluble protein kinases and membraneassociated receptor kinases assemble into functional complexes and regulate their signaling through molecular interactions with regulatory proteins. Her group also investigates alternative non-catalytic roles of protein kinases as scaffolds in cellular signaling pathways. They apply this knowledge for design of small molecule inhibitors that target these poorly understood kinase functions in human diseases.Dr. Jura received her M.S in biochemistry from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland and her Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology from Stony Brook University.

James Murphy is Associate Professor and the head of the Inflammation Division at the WEHI (formerly known as The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) in Melbourne and is closely associated with The University of Melbourne and The Royal Melbourne Hospital. James’ lab studies the protein-protein interactions that underpin signal transduction. Much of his work is focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms by which protein kinases and their relatives, pseudokinases, regulate cell signaling. Their work on the pseudokinase, MLKL, provided a template for developing a detailed understanding of how the remaining ~50 uncharacterized pseudokinases modulate cell signaling.