The lab may be shut down for a(nother) stint, but there are still exciting developments to celebrate! Last week, Janice was awarded an NSERC CGS-M - fantastic! And when I asked her for a picture to use, she sent this one, and it hit me that as an undergraduate she had a ‘wall of dogs’ (pictures) in her room in residence, and as a graduate student, she’s had actual dogs. Clearly, graduate school is where dreams come true.
With the recent Stay-at-Home order in Ontario, I made the decision to shut down the lab for the next four weeks. If I said it was a difficult decision, I’d be lying - it’s a painful one, sure, but it was easy to make: things are getting bad out there.
My decision is no indictment of McMaster’s current research restrictions - every lab is different, and my comfort level with our shared space, location in the hospital, number of commuters on public transit, and other factors influenced my decision to impose restrictions beyond those in force on Campus.
We’ll see you all in four weeks. (Img: CBC, via PHO)
At this week’s McMaster Biochemistry Graduate Student Research Symposium (BBSRS), 5 of the team presented in some form or another - but the lab distinguished itself as both Alejandra and Janice won prizes for being best in their categories (oral PDF, Poster., respectively). The image below is a central panel in Janice’s poster - I learned from Michael Baym this week they were initially called “OMG” plates. Guess they still have that wow factor!
Last week, Tamina passed her Candidacy exam. Stressful at the best of times, I think it is even more stressful when you are being judged by 2-3 children under 6 as well as the usual panel of examiners. Well done, Tamina!
If the title catches your eye, hopefully our latest review will as well. Not only is it a great summary of where things are right now in the field, I think it also builds a strong case for how we could (and should) look at phages (even of aerobes) differently, and dig a little deeper to find the phages that lie just beyond the low-hanging fruit of the highly virulent phages.
Hiba did a fantastic job on this one, putting this all together mid-pandemic with a supervisor on parental leave.
We managed our annual secret santa despite the logistical challenges, and had an absoolute blast! In addition, I forced everyone to share what they were proud of in 2020, and it was a testimony to the team what a wonderful variety of personal milestones and accomplishments people had to look back on with pride.
Congratulations to Félix, who won the award for best PhD Poster at this year’s IIDR. He did an excellent job, and helped others in the lab navigate this new online poster format. Although he did whine just a wee bit about the platform at lab meeting. Clearly, he managed to power through his reservations and highlight his fantastic work.
In recognition of amazing efforts in the field of infectious disease research, the IIDR awarded Dr. Chavez-Carbajal this year’s Mildred Gulliver Postdoctoral award. It was the first time we presented the second half of this story, and even knowing the whole thing, the data still get me excited. Well done, Alejandra!
First - my unreserved congratulations to two amazing people, leaders in the field, and unquestionably deserving scientists. Second, it’s a little horrifying to realize how few women have won a Nobel Prize - this is now 6 in Chemistry? This is a celebration of a field and two luminaries within it, but - and while this is true of every Nobel prize, because this is ‘my’ field, I feel it particularly strongly - remember that science is collaborative and a team effort!
A quick post to welcome the newest Hynes lab member, Oscar, born Sept 2nd. He entered the lab at age 3 h 11 min, setting a new record, previously held by Liam in 2018, who was at least 12 h at the time. It is a bit weird to think that my home now contains more people (not counting the dog) than are allowed to be in my lab at any given time…
And with that, expect a gap in updates, delays in email replies, and all the other side-effects of parental leave.
While the pandemic is wreaking merry havoc with the lab’s capacity and workflows, we’re still delighted to welcome back Janice Tai, now as an MSc student in Biochemistry. Taking a step away from her undergraduate thesis work on Pseudomonas phages, she’ll be pursuing a crazy idea given form through a wonderful, hurried meeting between the Farncombe and APC Microbiome teams at an airport hotel in Heathrow. And you know this is going to be cool, because it involves building up some Baym-style megaplates.
Today, the lab celebrates the news of a new grant from the W. Garfield Weston Foundation. This is our first time interacting with the foundation, and some aspects of the feedback process were very refreshing! In short, this grant funds Tamina’s project in partnership with the Bienenstock lab at McMaster, to see whether prophages are contibuting to the ‘probiotic’ activities seen in cell-free preparations from probiotic bacteria. I’m extremely excited to see where this will lead us - I think the foundation, the reviewers and I are all very aware that if this early work pays off, it could have enormous implications!
Today marked the last of the four Phage Canada Symposia, this time on Phages Applied. With an exceptional team of trainees spanning UBC to MUN, and presenters from every lab that expressed an interest, I think I can call the first Phage Canada event an unqualified success. Now to figure out what form Phage Canada can take going forward!
In another (socially distant, responsible) outing, most of the lab joined me for a walk in my “backyard” - the Dundas Valley Conservation Area. Despite dire forecasts, we had great attendance, fantastic weather, raspberries and blackberries to pick. Photo credit Gayatri (as I suspect you can tell!).
For the first time since the lab shutdown in March, we managed a small (outdoors, distant) get-together. We have been meaning to do this for a while, but the heat has been getting in the way! While not everyone could make it, we picked some berries, wandered the butterfly gardens, and mostly, I chased Liam as he repeatedly ran off to his favourite spot inside the bushes, while the lab carried on without me. A reasonable metaphor.
The Hynes lab is on fire, with Félix claiming first prize at the second phage symposium for his presentation on STIs. Sexually transmitted Immunity, of course. This is setting the bar pretty high for Rabia and Amany on August 7th…
Congratulations!
Not only was the first Phage Canada Symposium a resounding success - I also get to congratulate Alejandra for her fantastic talk, which won an award! Her work with the Singer Rotor - the first time we have shared it outside McMaster, was extremely well-received.
Ok, sure, we are back in the lab - and that’s exciting. But even more exciting is that the inaugural Phage Canada Symposia are launching this Friday, and we will have presentations from our own lab - Alejandra - on that very first day.
This has been a pet project of mine, at the back of my mind for a year and a half now, but the COVID situation made it just the right time to launch it. Clearly, Canadian phage researchers agree with me - with over 128 registrants spanning 40 research teams, this is going to be something special. Follow the event on Twitter (@phagecanada). This could not have happened without an insanely dedicated organizing comittee of trainees spanning lab across Canada, who led the herculean task of getting this up and running in, basically, a single month.
I, Alexander Hynes, who is again definitely writing this post, am proud of my second student graduating from the Hynes lab. Anisha, pictured here with her only friend in grad school [ed. note: is this because you still hate everyone in the lab, or because they just can’t beat coffee?], came into the lab with no previous experience in microbiology. While I can’t say much has changed on that front, she has learned a great deal about version control of edits. She plans to stick around until she gets a callback from her Bollywood auditions.
[ed. note: Sheesh, I thought when I told the students to write their own farewell posts, they’d be cheerier. Oops]
Congratulations to Andrew, Kevin and Stephanie - all of whom were admitted to McMaster’s med school this week! While I would normally take the opportunity to make a snarky ‘dark side’ style comment, in view of the current pandemic and the work of front-line healthcare workers, I just can’t seem to do it.
