Farncombe
Phage

When has the lab ever looked this good? Not since the last lab cleanup, back in July. It always surprises me how satisfying a thorough cleanup can be - my thanks to all the students, who scrubbed on hands and knees alongside me to achieve this.

The third iteration of the Phage Boot Camp, with my own incoming students complemented by a contingent of Brown Lab (now) phage experts. This time, I condensed things down to two days, and it worked (mostly). Always a little more tweaking to be done for Boot Camp IV, either this May or Sept.

Ok, so it wasn’t a hootenanny, but I’m a sucker for alliteration. Although, to be fair, the highlight - the spontaneous pyjama party pictured here, might actually qualify. We celebrated a great first year!

The Stearns & Hynes labs join forces once again for a Secret Santa. The undisputed “winner” gave a gift including the poem “Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Your bacterium has no DNA, what do you do?”

The IIDR Trainee Day saw 3 poster presentations from the lab; Anisha (not pictured - no good shot of all three!), Felix and Hiba. It’s the lab’s first forray into posters, but I don’t think there are any kinks to iron out - everyone did a great job!

Roland Chou, the lab’s summer NSERC USRA student, got a chance to present his work today - really happy with where that story is heading (in fact, I’m so excited about its potential that I gave a talk about it just yesterday!)

Modelled around Brookyn Nine-Nine’s Halloween Heist, the Stearns and Hynes labs had a ‘friendly’ competition to secure a trophy before the end of the day. In a picture perfect finish, we exposed that we knew of their fake trophy all along, tricked them into proudly displaying our own fake (real geniuses would know how to spell genius, I’m afraid), and secured the real one. We hope this is a start of an annual tradition, not just of the heist, but of total victory.

The Department of Biochemistry takes Halloween seriously. Our first participation in the pumpkin carving contest (pictured) was outclassed away by the Surette Lab’s herculean efforts (the back of which is visible behind ours). We’ll have to do better next year.

The stars align: today I have a (long ago planned) guest lecture on technologies developed using phages, and the Nobel Committee announces the Laureates in Chemistry; Frances H Arnold, Sir Gregory P Winter & George P Smith - the latter two for their work on Phage Display. The list of phage nobel laureates keeps getting bigger!

The lack of updates is a product of Dr. Hynes’s sleep-deprived parental leave, but the lab is still doing great things! Today, Hiba presented her work to the Farncombe Institute, engaging an audience from a wide variety of backgrounds. Great job!