Evaluated: UA62784 Is a cytotoxic inhibitor of microtubules, not CENP-E.

This paper recently caught my eye. I evaluated it for Faculty of 1000.

S Tcherniuk,S Deshayes,V Sarli,G Divita,A Abrieu (2011)
UA62784 Is a cytotoxic inhibitor of microtubules, not CENP-E.
Chem Biol 18, 5.
PMID: 21609844 DOI: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2011.03.006

F1000 evaluation at: http://f1000.com/14267299

This paper caught my eye as it alters our perception of the target of the small molecule inhibitor UA62784. Previously characterised as a CENP-E inhibitor, the authors here show that it is in fact a potent inhibitor of microtubule dynamics and has no inhibitory effect on CENP-E in vitro.

While clearly of interest to those in the mitosis field, this work also has great importance for those (including us) who have used such compounds for other reasons. It also provides a nice chemical biology story relating to the importance of target validation. Indeed, there are two companion pieces relating to this issue that I would also recommend reading {1,2}.

References:

{1} Chemical inhibitors: the challenge of finding the right target.
Calligaris D, Lafitte D
Chemistry & Biology 2011 May 27; 18(5): 555-7

{2} Motor-dependent and -independent roles of CENP-E at kinetochores: the cautionary tale of UA62784.
Maiato H, Logarinho E
Chemistry & Biology 2011 Jun 24; 18(6): 679-80

PowerPoint with embedded movies on the iPad

Having recently bought and iPad but not being a Mac user I found some issues with getting the content I wanted to loaded.

The simple thing was Powerpoint presentations with embedded movies. On my PC these are all WMV files which I generated from original AVI files.

I am sure there are 1001 ways of doing this but I thought I would share mine as clearly there are 1001 websites with conflicting info on there. The easy solution I found was to buy Keynote from the app store. This runs all my PowerPoint presentations easily it seems. The only issue was then getting the embedded movies in.
Solution was to convert them to MP4 for which I use the (free) Leawo MP4 Converter.

This was a very quick easy and free way to convert and enables batch conversion. The whole folder took about 10 mins. A couple did not convert but I think this is down to old codecs used to make them in the first place.

I then uploaded these to my iPad using iTunes (Photos folder, manually selecting which folders to use).

In Keynote on the iPad I then found I simply needed to deletee the embedded movie which wouldn’t run and insert (as a new item) the relevant MP4.
Bingo. Cost £6.99 for Keynote app, time taken ~ 2 hours to work it out and then achieve. Result, nice looking presentation on iPad. The display on the 2012 version is great for this.
The method which didn’t work was to use “replace” not delete and insert from scratch. Having looked at a variety of websites about this issue, this seems to be where some go wrong.

All good now – question remains when will I be brave enough to present using this alone and not take my trusty laptop with me? For the time being I can now load any presentation I have to at least show and discuss whenever I like.