Koutmos Lab

We are the Koutmos lab at @MichiganChem. We use x-ray crystallography to investigate protein and RNA structure in many contexts, including metalloenzyme chemistry, RNA processing, and ribozyme function/dynamics. We're excited to share research news with our colleagues on Twitter!

Johnny Mendoza successfully defended his thesis this past November! All his hard work really paid off! Congratulations Johnny! We are excited to see what you do next! 🥳🎂🎊

SPOTTED: the Koutmos Lab at the Rustbelt RNA Meeting Congratulations to everyone who gave a poster/presentation! Looking forward to the next meeting @RRM_RNA

5 years of growth in the Koutmos Lab! 💪

Markos' tenure talk is today! Join us at 4pm in CHEM 1640 to learn about the variety of projects in the lab - from B12/metalloenzymes to RNA modifications to riboswitches!

Extremely proud of @SDeangelo95, a Ph. D student in @YatrikShahLab and @KoutmosLab for successfully defending and giving an awesome dissertation presentation. Congrats Dr. DeAngelo 🎉🎉🎉!

Congratulations, Dr. Stephen DeAngelo! Steve just defended his thesis on the role of the selenoproteome in colorectal cancer. He has been such a wealth of knowledge in our lab, and we can't wait to see his future work!

Congratulations, Dr. Elizabeth Tidwell and Dr. Catherine Wilhelm!

Congratulations to Jacqui (left), Matt (right), and Bella (not pictured) for their awards from the @MichiganChem Department! We are so fortunate to be working with such dedicated and enthusiastic undergraduate researchers. Thanks for being awesome!

Congratulations to Dr. Catherine Wilhelm for defending her thesis in Chemistry in March! We have been so lucky to have her for the past several years! Go Cat!!! 🥳

You can also check out Bella's poster showcasing her work making and characterizing mitochondrial tRNAs at the @URSymposium in the @MichiganChem atrium!

Check out Matt's poster covering his work on the tRNA methyltransferase TRMT1 at the @URSymposium in the @MichiganChem atrium!

We are thrilled to announce our latest review article about PRORPs in @WIREs_Reviews: "The protein-only RNase Ps, endonucleases that cleave pre-tRNA...". You can read more about it at the link below! 😄 wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…

Congrats, Steve! 🥳 Steve has done a great job tying together both cancer biology (@YatrikShahLab) and protein biochemistry (our lab), and he has given our lab a big appreciation how RNA mods play a role in cancer. This work has been a long time in the making!

Markos visited UPenn this week and met up with not one, but *two* lab alumni! 🤩 Leena (left) is now a research scientist in the @SgourakisLab, and Shayna (right) is now a grad student at @BMBGGUPENN!

Congratulations to Dr. Liz Tidwell for defending her thesis in Biophysics in November! You can read about it in @IJMS_MDPI: Fluorescent Ligand Equilibrium Displacement: A High-Throughput Method for Identification of FMN Riboswitch-Binding Small Molecules. mdpi.com/1422-0067/25/2…

This weekend marked yet another successful Rustbelt RNA Meeting (@RRM_RNA)! Congratulations to Catherine Wilhelm and Liz Tidwell for their talk and poster awards! Keep an eye out for news about the 2024 Rustbelt RNA Meeting, which Markos will help co-chair 😄

A lot of hard work is coming to fruition recently! Here's our recent @NatureComms article on Methionine Synthase (MS) using a thermophilic model to understand how it orchestrates large multi-domain rearrangements. nature.com/articles/s4146…

We're excited to announce our newest paper in @jbiolchem: Bacterial RNA-free RNase P: structural and functional characterization of multiple oligomeric forms of a minimal protein-only ribonuclease P. Learn more about this beauty in the pre-proof version: tinyurl.com/HARPRNaseP

Many #MichiganChem labs celebrate the end of a great summer with a group picnic! ☀️ To highlight a few, here are some photos from the Walter, Sanford, Koutmos, and Shultz labs! @NilsWalterLab @KoutmosLab @Sanford_Lab @ShultzGroupCER

We had a fantastic time kayaking down the river to celebrate the end of summer, along with welcoming our newest rotation student Alice Youle! 🛶☀️