In a rather unusual turn, I found out our latest paper was published when a colleague asked me for a reprint! After a very long run up, it’s finally out in MMBR - “To Lyse or Not to Lyse: Biasing Bacteriophage Behaviours”. Huge congratulations to Rabia, who initially conceived of this - and if you want an overview of how we think about the main research thrust of the lab, you can’t get any better than this
See, I was going to go with “Terrific” too, but my students beat me to it and I think that means I can’t use it. Yesterday, the BBS summer scholars program closed off with their symposium, and Teneilia put together a wonderfully accessible showcase of her work in the lab over the last 10 weeks. That’s such a short time to learn, carry out, and then teach/present everything, and I’m extremely impressed at the skills on display by this entire cohort!
It seems crazy that we’re already halfway through the summer, and crazier still that it means its time to introduce some of our incoming Fall 2026 cohort. Check out the “our team” to meet Lucas, Aveer, and Kirsten - all of whom will be around for the Fall!
Rabia was selected to attend the Basel In vitro modelling course she’s had her eye on since Urs Jenal came to Mac and shared his research. This is quite a competitive process, and a big milestones! She’ll be exploring Switzerland this Fall - you can see the course offerings here
“Beautiful talk, beautiful slides - a model for how these kinds of presentations should be” - Institute Director. ‘Nuff Said? Eve gave her first RIP ever, and - unsurprisingly - nailed it.
The latin isn’t mine. I won’t claim I’m not that pretentious (I am!) - but this time I’m blameless. At the Phage Therapy Event at UofT yesterday, I was awarded a paddle/trident for my contributions to Phage Canada. It was a celeration of some real headway made in the phage therapy landscape, and an honour to be featured at the event!
Picture a bit unusual? This is the awesome Wee Book Inn on Whyte, in Edmonton. The more academic pictures/group shots are in the full article, but this was our wonderful annual pilgrimage to the CSM, with posters by Niousha, Eve and Christine, and a talk (in the fungal section!) by Rabia. Rabia and I are CSM regulars, but this was Niousha & Eve’s first go - and Christine’s second. It was a blast, as always. The running was good too :P.
BBS Olympiad, Barbeque… and a record in updating the lab group picture, to (Technically) only 10 days since the most recent addition. Not bad… launching into conference season.
This was Niousha’s first RIP, and she knocked it out of the park. A tonne of work went into crafting this story and making it accessible, and it paid off - it was a wonderfully approachable take on this. Congratulations.
Twice in the last year, I got ‘suckered’ into reviewing two papers for the same journal because they were thematically linked. In this case, no good deed goes unrewarded - both journals asked me to highlight the papers in question. Back in January, Christine got to showcase the “Perfect Predators Persist” story, and now, in May, Ayesha gets to share this gem on phage-phage communication.
Neat too that just last week, Dr. Penades was here at Mac to discuss his research.
Our Trio of new undergrads joined us for their inaugural lab cleanup, which was - for reasons of leave - at least four months overdue. As you can tell from the gleaming surfaces behind them, though, we were all up to the task!
As if to celebrate my return from pat leave yesterday, the world was not content for me simply to bike in without any dismounts in the conservation area. No, today was action-packed: Ayesha (U)’s top-notch RIP, Tejas & Ayesha (A)’s thesis day presentations. What a celebration of the good science that went on without me… here’s hoping my return doesn’t mess anything up.
In a pattern of absenteeism (this leave, honestly!), I missed yet another sci-comm triumph at this year’s BBSRS. The main picture here is Tejas, an undergrad with his first ever poster (looking slick!) - but click through for Eve and Christine’s appearances as well!
Regrettably, Pat leave got in the way of me attending a rip-roaring RIP of Christine’s. On the bright side, it was so good (and she was proud enough of it) that she then walked me through the final version at our one-on-one… so I got a pretty good feel for it. Some serious scicomm chops here!
The image here is of a wonderful print gifted to me at my visit to UofT Mississauga yesterday. I think it’s the longest I’ve gone without giving a talk (this pat leave!) - but it went very well, despite the very very strange “UofT time” of the session (honestly, starting at 10 min after the hour? what?).
This is one of those “picture is worth 1000 words” - anything I add here will be a rounding error. We had a visitor today….
Christine and I were privileged to get to feature the incredible discoveries of not one, but two independent groups. It’s one of those wonderful situations where the two groups stumbled upon this, but were able to publish in the same journal, at the same time. And we get to spotlight them!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-025-02226-x
The first lab Solstice party at the new digs, and this… this is a lab group photo that can’t be beat: 10 lab children! You can click through for the older lab members too, if you like. As usual, we shared a potluck with traditional meals, exchanged Secret Santa Gifts, and the kids roped us into board games (Werewolf!). Because the new place is a fair bit larger, I was able to extend the invitation to past lab members, and I’m so glad several were able to make it out! Next year, we’re going to need to set up a kiddy table for sure…
See, while the cat is away, the mice… still win prizes and represent the lab. Here’s our lab’s inaugural entry in the Gingerbread House Decorating Contest!
A phenomenal keynote. Alex asking surprisingly few questions of the speakers (if people didn’t know I was on new-baby-sleep-deprivation status, I think they’d be seriously alarmed). And our own Hynes lab showcase: That’s three quarters of the poster-presenting crew, with a tired, attempting-to-caffeinate Alex in the background. This IIDR was Niousha’s first ever poster, while Rabia presented her side-story for the first time (and won a prize for it). Plenty of pictures after the jump!
