It's been a great week so far -two papers accepted and a further one subject to revisions. Watch this space for some publication updates coming soon!

New group photo 😊

Congratulations to Connor & Valerio who celebrated their PhD graduations from the group recently and good luck in all your future endeavors!

We have an opportunity for a 24 month postdoc position in chemical proteomics starting after January 1st 2026 and another for September 2026 to join the group. More details on our website:
joannamcgouran.wixsite.com/mysite/join

Huge congratulations to Gemma on her poster prize at the RSC Organic Ireland meeting yesterday! Very proud supervisor moment for me as it was Gemma's first poster presentation.

Delighted that I could make it to Ellen & Susie's graduation celebration last week! Susie is about to begin a postdoc in The University of Sheffield and Ellen has moved into publishing at the Lancet.

Nominations for the CBBG Lectureship Award are now open! Get your nominations in by 30th April, to recognise individuals who have made excellent contributions to both research and the UK chemical biology community.

www.rsc.org/membership-a...

Our group's latest review of DNA damage repair enzyme SNM1A is now online! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Huge congratulations to 1st author Mark who wrote the first draft of this review as his PhD thesis introduction. Mark has just taken up a Lecturer position in Queens University Belfast.

Delighted to share our latest publication using the thiol-ene reaction for protein profiling. Very versatile modes of activation can be used from uv and blue light activated initiators to a redox initiator.
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
Huge congratulations to André for leading the research

We have another Dr in the house! Congratulations to Valerio for passing his PhD viva on Monday. Next month Valerio will begin a new adventure in Canada as a postdoc at McGill University 🍾🥂👨‍🎓

Congratulations to Connor for passing his viva with minor corrections last week! 🍾🥂Dr O'Leary is PhD number 7 from the McGouran group 👨‍🔬👨‍🎓

I've come up with an organic chemistry version of the name game. Original(ish) rules here:(grandmaideas.com/play-the-nam...)

I'm very tempted to subject the lab to it in our next group meeting

Here are some free/open-source sites for the preparation of scientific illustrations, including icon libraries: bioicons.com, scidraw.io, bioart.niaid.nih.gov, inkscape.org, biogdp.com, reactome.org/icon-lib

If you like total synthesis and Wordle, check out Synthordle, a retrosynthetic analysis game created by Shenvi Lab associates Kevin Zong (GS 2) and Jonah Luo (HS sophomore!).
shenvilab.github.io/Synthordle/
Easy problems for Sophomore OChem, hard problems for advanced practitioners.

The annual Royal Society of Chemistry Chemical Biology and Bioorganic Group Forum will be in Bristol next year (18th Feb)!

Talks spots are open to new group leaders and postdocs - so get your abstracts in by 8th December!

Please share 🙏 🧪 #chemsky

www.rsc.org/events/detai...

Check out this list of ubiquitin and Ubl profiles to follow. Repost if you want me to add you to it. Let’s create a good community here ☁️ go.bsky.app/3VPQofn