Biochemistry, University of Toronto

SickKids-led researchers receive numerous grants from the Canada Foundation for Innovation

27 March 2021|

Professors Julie Forman-Kay, Simon Sharpe, P. Lynne Howell and John Rubinstein were awarded new CFI funds to help bring new technology to SickKids.

Professors Julie Forman-Kay, and Simon Sharpe, received more than $1.6 million to build on the SickKids Structural and Biophysical Core (SBC) facility. These new funds will support critical enhancements to cutting-edge research, knowledge creation, and training across biology and biophysics, including immunogen design for improved […]

Latest Platform Support Grant to the Attisano Lab to make advanced brain models

27 March 2021|

Together with the Krembil Foundation, Brain Canada awarded a Platform Support Grant (PSG) to a team spearheaded by Professor Liliana Attisano. She will be receiving $1,425,000 to support the Applied Organoid Core (ApOC), an organoid production platform for modelling human brain development and disorders.

Functional cooperativity between the trigger factor chaperone and the ClpXP proteolytic complex

12 March 2021|

Rizzolo K, Yu AYH, Ologbenla A, Kim SR, Zhu H, Ishimori K, Thibault G, Leung E, Zhang YW, Teng M, Haniszewski M, Miah N, Phanse S, Minic Z, Lee S, Caballero JD, Babu M, Tsai FTF, Saio T, Houry WA.

In this manuscript, Walid A. Houry’s group identified a potential co-translational degradation pathway in Gram negative bacteria. A functional association […]

Undergraduate science education continues even during a Global pandemic

6 March 2021|

BCH377, our advance laboratory course for specialist students in Biochemistry, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, is an applied biochemistry techniques course. Our hearty and resilient group of students joining from; out of the city, province and country this semester. How could we maintain the objective of teaching practical biochemistry during the COVID fall semester of 2020?

Well the answer was to take equal parts outstanding, and I mean outstanding, specialist students, and […]

Dr. Nana Lee’s Global Outreach Continues

1 March 2021|

Dr. Nana Lee continues to highlight her expertise on graduate professional development, mentorship, leadership, and equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at multiple speaking engagements in 2021. She brings her enthusiasm, charisma and innovative multiple, interactive tools through the virtual learning space to provide an inclusive, engaged audience.

Some of her speaking events the past two months include sharing her “Students as Partners” model with […]

Development of antibiotics that dysregulate the Neisserial ClpP protease

1 March 2021|

In this highly collaborative effort, the groups of Walid A. Houry, Emil F. Pai, Robert A. Batey, and Scott D. Gray-Owen describe the generation and characterization of novel antibiotics targeting the bacterial ClpP protease.

Evolving antimicrobial resistance has motivated the search for novel targets and alternative therapies. Caseinolytic protease (ClpP) has emerged as an enticing new target since its function is conserved and […]

A strong case for increasing federal funding for basic research

20 February 2021|

Professors Palazzo and Moraes co-authored an OpEd, “Dwindling Funding for Canadian Science”, that appeared in The Future Economy.

They point out that Canada now spends less of its GDP on science than any other G7 country except for Italy. As a result, many scientists do not have funding to conduct the work they were hired to do.

They strongly urge that the Canadian government increase its investment in research, especially […]

New Tricks for Phages

18 February 2021|

In the latest issue of Molecular Cell, the Maxwell, Davidson and Moraes labs identify and characterize Aqs1, a multi-purpose DMS3 phage protein. Aqs1 binds and inhibits LasR, which is required for quorum sensing and the release of several anti-phage defenses in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. But that’s not all. Aqs1 also binds PilB, and thereby blocks pilus assembly. Since the bacterial pilus helps phage to infect, Aqs1 prevents further […]

Phase separation of macromolecules in health and disease

28 December 2020|

It is very hard to understand the effects of disease mutations that are prevalent in intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDRs). In a Perspective published in the December 23, 2020 issue of Cell, a collaborative Toronto team from the groups of Julie Forman-Kay, Alan Moses and Steve Scherer put forward both general and specific hypotheses for how IDR mutations lead to pathology in complex diseases, particularly in autism spectrum […]

Message from the Chair

18 December 2020|

Apologies for the delay – this semester has been pretty hectic and it’s been a while since I’ve had the bandwidth to put one of these notes together.

We’ve come through the semester pretty well all things considered. All reports are that undergraduate and graduate teaching has gone as well as can be expected – thanks to the Alexes, Jen Haughton and Carrie Harber for their hard work keeping those ships […]

Oliver P. Ernst Wins the 2020 Konrad Adenauer Research Award

8 December 2020|

Our congratulations goes out to Professor Oliver Ernst, the recipient of the 2020 Konrad Adenauer Research Award.

The Humboldt Foundation’s Konrad Adenauer Research Award honours researchers from Canada whose fundamental discoveries and findings have helped shape their discipline beyond their immediate research area and whose personality and research have contributed to strengthening academic and cultural relations between Germany and Canada.

The Evolution of Biological Complexity from Junk

1 December 2020|

What if we told you that you have a brain not because of natural selection, but in spite of it?

In the latest issue of Cell, Professor Alex Palazzo and his collaborator, Eugene Koonin from the NIH, have advanced a new theory on how biological complexity evolves. Most scientists assume that novel genes evolve as a direct consequence of natural selection, but Palazzo and Koonin present evidence […]

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