![]() Baker will also star in the film which follows a pair of teenagers in Western Australia as they look to escape the monotony of life in a small town by taking surfing lessons from Sando (Baker). The film won the 2011 Independent Spirit Award for Best Ensemble Cast and was named one of the Top Ten Independent Films of the year by The National Board of Review.īaker and producer Mark Johnson recently acquired Tim Winton's novel Breath to adapt into a feature film which they will co-produce. The film features an ensemble cast including Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto and Demi Moore. His performance has earned him both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor in a Drama Series.īaker was most recently seen in Margin Call, a thriller which revolves around the key players at an investment banking firm during a 24-hour period in the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis. Currently in season 6, Baker plays a former ‘psychic’ scam artist who now uses his gifts of human observation to help the California Bureau of Investigation. Our PPI is critical to ensure the research remains focussed and that the data drives evidence-based change in clinical practice to improve the lives of patients.A Golden Globe and Emmy nominated actor, Australian-born Simon Baker has an impressive background that spans both film and television, capturing the attention of audiences worldwide.īaker can currently be seen playing Patrick Jane in the hugely popular series The Mentalist on CBS. With our aim to improve the lives of those suffering from BK infection, our public and patient involvement (PPI) work helps develop the research. Helping those suffering from BK infections D-loops could provide an ideal single-stranded substrate for deamination. We are interested in how the APOBEC enzymes end up damaging the host genome and one hypothesis we are testing is a model where large T antigen and APOBEC3B mediate DNA damage at displacement loops formed during the G2/M arrest that occurs during BK infections. Importantly this corresponded to damage of the host urothelial genome as observed in an apurnic/apyrimidinic sites assay. The next step is collecting the mutational signatures of viral infections and comparing them to tumours, so the risk of a BK infection can be established.īK polyomavirus infection led to increases in APOBEC3A and APOBC3B protein, and increases in activity in deaminase functional assays. ![]() APOBEC3A/3B function was driven by the virus and led to damage of the host genome (quantified as apurinic/apyrimidinic sites in the genome Oncogene 2022). Our work has shown that BK infection of the urothelium leads to the activation of APOBECs which damage the genome, potentially leading to cancers. ![]() When BK virus becomes reactivated it can be detected in the urine. BK virus is known to establish a persistent/latent infection of the kidney that survives into adulthood and can become reactivated. My fellowship is looking at BK polyomavirus, which is a common childhood viral infection. Most bladder cancer genomes harbour a mixture of the single base substitution signatures SBS2 and SBS13, which have been ascribed to APOBEC-mediated cytosine deamination. In bladder cancers the predominant mutational signatures originate from cytosine deamination by anti-viral enzymes called “APOBECs”. The mutations we find in bladder tumours don’t carry the signature of chemical carcinogens. Could a virus be the cause of bladder cancer? We were the first to describe a method for deriving mutational signatures from a carcinogenic exposure in an in vitro differentiated human tissue model. These mutational signatures might help explain the cause of the cancer in each individual and potentially guide treatment approaches. Some of these toxins damage the DNA and we are looking at whether certain chemicals leave their signature in the DNA, in the form of specific mutation types. The bladder epithelium (“urothelium”) spends your whole life exposed to concentrated toxins in the urine. ![]() Because this question remains unanswered, there has been little progress in the prevention of bladder cancer. The main part of my research seeks to address this simple question. A mutational signature can be used, much like a fingerprint, to identify the causes of DNA damage and establish the relevant risk factors for different cancers. A particular recent focus has been the diagnostic patterns of DNA-damage left in the genome by specific events, known as “mutational signatures”. Much of my work involves genomic and transcriptomic methods, which are used to examine how the genes of cells can be damaged and the ways in which the genes are used in response.
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