Dr Lukoyanova is the EM
facility co-ordinator at the Institute of Structural
and Molecular Biology (ISMB). Her primary
responsibilities include maintaining the
instrumentation, teaching new users, and providing
advice to users on sample preparation, data
collection and image processing. She is also
actively involved in coordination of data collection
at the national Electron Bio-Imaging Centre (eBIC)
at Diamond.
She is involved in
running biannual EMBO courses on EM image processing
at Birkbeck, teaching at RMS Electron Microscopy
Schools and cryo EM preparation courses at the eBIC.
Her current research
(collaboration with Prof.
C. Kleanthous, University of Oxford) focuses on
the formation of E. coli outer membrane ColE9
translocon complex. They have shown previously that
translocon formation involves ColE9’s unstructured
N-terminal domain threading in opposite directions
through two OmpF subunits; this enables capture of its
target TolB on the other side of the membrane in a
fixed orientation that triggers colicin import
(Housden et al., 2013). Thus an intrinsically
disordered protein can tunnel through the narrow pores
of an oligomeric porin to deliver an epitope signal to
initiate cell death.
Before becoming facility co-ordinator, she was a
senior postdoc in Prof.
H. Saibil’s group (Birkbeck). In this role, she
was responsible for the EM component of a
multidisciplinary study of the molecular mechanisms of
membrane disruption by MACPF/CDC pore-forming
proteins. Previously, she studied the structure of
septin filaments with Prof. J. Trinick (University of
Leeds) and actin and actin binding proteins during her
postdoctoral training under Prof. E. Egelman
(University of Virginia).
