Kelly-Anne Twist

B.Sc., B.Sc. Hon., Victoria University of Wellington
Structural Studies of Three Factors That Affect the Prokaryotic Transcription Cycle:
Microcin J25, Lambda Q and T4 GP33
presented by Seth A. Darst

I have the pleasure of introducing you to Kelly-Anne Twist. I think Kelly-Anne would consider herself a native New Zealander, but she also spent some of her formative years living on the island of Niue.

Kelly-Anne came to the lab with a strong desire to learn a technique called x-ray crystallography and began working on a collaborative project to synthesize and characterize a peptide inhibitor of RNA polymerase. We thought this would take a few weeks and could ultimately lead to a crystal structure of the complex with RNA polymerase. This turned out to be the beginning of an amazing adventure, with Kelly-Anne at the center of it, to determine the structure of this inhibitor. In the process, Kelly-Anne learned peptide chemistry, biochemistry, advanced mass spectrometry techniques, as well as NMR, but the work did not lead to any x-ray crystallography.

Kelly-Anne then set out on a number of other projects with the goal of using x-ray crystallography to determine structures of transcriptional regulatory proteins. Kelly-Anne made a number of contributions, but none of these projects led to a crystal structure either.

As many crystallographers will readily admit, success at crystallography involves a pinch of luck, and finally Kelly-Anne got lucky. She crystallized and determined the structure of an interesting complex involved in transcription regulation by T4 phage.

During all this, Kelly-Anne has been successfully engaged in another collaborative project, where she’s working with her husband Malcolm to raise their lovely daughter, Leona. I wish Kelly-Anne and her family continued luck.