Protein Chemistry and Metabolism - Senior Research Staff - Prof Bruce E. Kemp

Prof Bruce E. Kemp

Pehr Edman Fellow
Professorial Associate Department Medicine, The University of Melbourne, St Vincent's Hospital

Education and Professional Experience

1970              BAgSci (Hons), Adelaide University
1975              PhD (Flinders)
1988-2004     Deputy Director of St Vincent's Institute
1980-1984     NHMRC Fellow, Howard Florey Institute
1985-1988     University Melbourne, Repatriation General Hospital, Heidelberg

Achievements

1988     Selwyn Smith Prize for Medical Research
1989     Newman Award for Excellence in AIDS Research (shared award)
1989     AIDS Trust of Australia Award
1990     Pharmacia-L.K.B. Medal and Travelling Fellowship Award
1990     The Wellcome Australia Medal for Medical Research and Technology Development
1991     The Wellcome Rapid Diagnostics Award
1996     Lemberg Medal. Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
1996     The Royal Society of Victoria Research Medal, Biological Sciences
2000     Fellow Australian Academy of Science
2000     Max Planck Award
2002     Fellow Royal Society UK
2003     Federation Fellow
2003     Centenary Medal (Australia)

Research Interests

Protein phosphorylation instrasteric regulation peptide substrates and inhibitors AMP activated protein kinase
Protein Phosphorylation
How protein phosphorylation regulates protein function, and how AMP activated protein kinase regulates metabolic and gene transcriptional responses to exercise and metabolic stress. Drug design to increase exercise capacity and reduce age onset diseases. The fat/vanity pill, exercise in a pill.
Obesity, diabetes endurance performance, drug design
ISI under Highly Cited in Biology & Biochemistry (1981-1999) Medline listings 251, Papers in Nature, 5 and Science 7. The first and seventh most cited papers in Australian Medical Research (Analysis of the impact of Australian biomedical research by Bourke and Butler ("The Research Enterprise: Mapping Australia's basic research in the medical and health sciences" Medical Journal of Australia 167: 610-3, 1997)

Selected Publications

  1. Kemp, B.E., Benjamini, E. and Krebs, E.G. Synthetic hexapeptide substrates and inhibitors of 3':5'-cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 73, 1038-1042, 1976.
  2. Kemp, B.E., Graves, D.J., Benjamini, E. and Krebs, E.G. Role of multiple basic residues in determining the substrate specificity of cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase. J. Biol. Chem., 252, 4888-4894, 1977.
  3. Kemp, B.E., Pearson, R.B., Guerriero Jr., V., Bagchi, I.C. and Means, A.R. The calmodulin-binding domain of chicken smooth muscle myosin light chain kinase contains a pseudosubstrate sequence. J. Biol. Chem., 262, 2542-2548, 1987.
  4. House, C. and Kemp, B.E. Protein kinase C contains a pseudosubstrate prototope in its regulatory domain. Science, 238, 1726-1728, 1987
  5. Kemp, B.E., Moseley, J.M., Rodda, C.P., Ebeling, P.R., Wettenhall, R.E.H., Stapleton, D., Diefenbach-Jagger, H., Ure, F., Michelangeli, V.P., Simmons, H.A., Raisz, L.G. and Martin, T.J. Parathyroid hormone-related protein of humoral hypercalcemia of malignancy: biologically active synthetic fragments. Science, 238, 1568-1570, 1987
  6. Pearson, R.B., Wettenhall, R.E.H., Means, A.R., Hartshorne, D.J. and Kemp, B.E. Autoregulation of enzymes by pseudosubstrate prototopes: myosin light chain kinase. Science, 241, 970-973, 1988.
  7. Kemp, B.E. and Pearson, R.B. Protein kinase recognition sequence motifs. Trends Biochem. Sci., 15, 342-346, 1990.
  8. Hu, S-H., Parker, M.W., Lei, J.Y., Wilce, M.C.J., Benian, G.M. and Kemp, B.E. Insights into autoregulation from the crystal structure of twitchin kinase. Nature, 369, 581-584, 1994.
  9. Mitchelhill, K.I., Stapleton, D., Gao, G., House, C., Michell, B., Katsis, F., Witters, L.A. and Kemp, B.E. Mammalian AMP-activated protein kinase shares structural and functional homology with the catalytic domain of yeast Snf1 protein kinase. J. Biol. Chem., 269, 2361-2364, 1994.
  10. Chen, Z-P, Mitchelhill, K.I., Michell, B.J., Stapleton, D., Rodriguez-Crespo, I. Witters, L.A., Power, D.A., Oritz de Montellano, P.R. and Kemp, B.E. AMP-activated protein kinase phosphorylation of endothelial NO synthase. FEBS Lett. 443, 285-289, 1999
  11. Chen, Z-P, T.J. Stephens, S. Murthy, B. J. Canny, M. Hargreaves, L.A. Witters, B.E. Kemp and G.K. McConell. Effect of exercise intensity on skeletal muscle AMPK signaling in humans. Diabetes, 52, 2205-2212, 2003
  12. Adams, J., Chen, Z-P., van Denderen, B.J.W., Morton, C.J., Parker, M.W., Witters, L.W., Stapleton, D. and Kemp, B.E. Intrasteric control of AMPK via the g1 subunit AMP allosteric regulatory site, Protein Science, 13, 155-65, 2004