It was a dreary day on June 13th but it would take more than a few showers to dampen the spirits of 24 intrepid biochemists who headed out to the Flemingdon Park 9-hole Golf Course in Midtown Toronto for our annual Golf Day. Each team had its share of beginners and ringers playing a “best ball” format that allowed everyone to contribute to their team. Despite spending more than a little time […]
Dr. Scott Prosser has received the 2017 Jeremy Knowles Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Read the full story: http://www.rsc.org/ScienceAndTechnology/Awards/JeremyKnowlesAward/2017-winner.asp
The type IV pilus is a long and sturdy grappling hook that bacteria use to attach to a surface and then pull themselves closer to the surface. They are important for virulence in many pathogens, including those that cause cholera, gonorrhoea, food-borne diseases, and multi-drug resistant hospital acquired infections. The molecular mechanism of the motors involved in throwing out and pulling […]
Two of Biochemistry’s professors, Drs. Aleixo Muise and Walter Kahr have discovered a brand new genetic disease through their research at the Hospital for Sick Children.
Their research article is published on Nature Communications.
Their story was also highlighted on the Hospital for Sick Children, CBC The National and CBC News Network, and the Globe and Mail websites:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/new-disease-discovered-1.4054061
Dr. Stavroula Andreopoulos and Dr. Derek Ng were awarded a 2017-2019 Elevation Grant from the Advancing Teaching and Learning in Arts & Science (ATLAS) initiatives fund. The proposal “Visual and Interactive Media for Deeper Molecular Understanding of Enzyme Kinetics” represents the start of a long-term mutually beneficial collaboration between the Department of Biochemistry and UTM’s Biomedical Communications (BMC) program. MScBMC students will design and develop a […]
Congratulatory message from the Chair
On behalf of the entire Biochemistry Department I would like to congratulate our esteemed colleague Dr. Lewis Kay on winning the Gairdner International Award, Canada’s highest science prize. Kay’s work on the development and use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques for investigating molecular motion and short lived conformations in large multiprotein complexes, or ‘seeing the unseeable’ to use the vernacular, has pushed boundaries […]
Congratulations to Dr. Stavroula Andreopoulos on receiving the 2017 Sustained Excellence and Innovation in Life Sciences Education Award.
This award will be presented at the 15th Annual Education Achievement Celebration on May 15th.
Using the modified membrane yeast two‐hybrid (MYTH) technology, researchers from the Stagljar lab mapped membrane protein interactions for clinically important G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs).
Read the full story on Faculty of Medicine website.
Read their paper on Molecular Systems Biology.
Dr. Sergio Grinstein was selected by the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences as this year’s recipient of the Canadian Science Publishing Senior Investigator Award. He will present his award talk at the upcoming meeting of the CSMB in Ottawa in May of this year.
Researchers in Prosser Lab and Pai Lab recently published in Science on the Role of Dimer Asymmetry and Protomer Dynamics in Enzyme Catalysis.
The associated YouTube video can be viewed here.
An interaction between the respiratory enzyme fumarate reductase (Frd, also known as Complex II) and an ATPase has been identified in E. coli by the Houry lab. The research shows that the RavA ATPase, belonging to a poorly characterized but ubiquitous MoxR family of AAA+ ATPases, associates with the Frd respiratory enzyme through an adaptor, which the group named ViaA. […]
The laboratory of Dr. Oliver Ernst has used X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of a membrane protein that never left a lipid-bilayer environment (i.e., without the use of conventional detergents). The work, published in Structure and highlighted on the Journal’s cover, was led by postdoctoral fellow Dr. Jana Broecker. Polymer-bounded lipid nanodiscs were used to extract and purify membrane proteins with their surrounding lipids and allowed […]