Sometimes the alliterations just write themselves… This year, we are feeling the lack of BBS pumpkin carving contest, or costume parade - but as a lab, people still shared their costumes and pumpkins for this year. Click through for more:
Yes, the title is an alliterative double! In giving today’s Noon Rounds presentation, I realized the last research talk I had given was… this, Noon Rounds, Feb 2019, in person. And that was one of my best talks ever… I even had props. Didn’t get a tonne of mileage out of that talk though… and because I’m a masochist, I didn’t even recycle a single slide for this new one. Still, had a blast showing off our latest research to a broad audience, highlighting the exceptional work of Amany, Rabia, and Steven (@McGill).
Lovely fall weather, the start of fall colours, and an easy stroll along the escarpment yesterday from Romar Dr to Borer’s Falls… we ought to do this more often! Click through for a second picture, both courtesy of Janice.
I just came back from the Department of Medicine Awards Dinner, the first in-person gathering of that size I’ve been to in… well, you know. Ages. It was great for that alone, but a particular pleasure to be recognized with the Graduate teaching award. Yes, yes, using my lab website to congratulate myself is pretty petty… but I am proud of the impact I’ve had on graduate students in this particularly tough stretch of time. And if I advise my students to toot their own horns, I, too, should take that advice!
When we first went into lockdown, Alejandra was resourceful and sought out collaborators back in Mexico that we could help out bioinformatically to push projects over a finish line. She picked up the skills, did the outreach, put in the hard work coordinating between our teams… and this wound up being much more than just helping with the bioinformatics. The results just got published today in Viruses - check them out here.
It turns out that zoom interviews does not prepare you for how tall your incoming cohort of students might be… This week, despite disruptions, we managed to complete the sixth iteration of the Phage Boot Camp, bringing Autumn, Jacob and Alan up to speed on the lab and the basics of phage handling. Gayatri also took it as a refresher. Next week it’ll be time for these students to put their newfound skills to the test.
Hiba dropped by to say hello (and goodbye!), something we didn’t really get to do after her defence! And, as her flights are booked for her PhD in Ireland starting later this month, I’ll raise a parting glass. Good night, and joy be with you all!
It’s been a while since we’ve welcomed brand new members to the team - so it’s with particular delight that I get to welcome our undergraduate thesis students for the year; Autumn, Alon and Jacob. They’ll be subjected to the Phage Boot Camp, and be ready to tackle some exciting projects over the coming year. To learn more about them, check out their updated profiles on the “The Team” page.
Yesterday was Onam in Kerala… but more importantly (!), it was also Tamina’s wedding. I was honoured to be a part of such an important milestone in a love story that has spanned continents and weathered COVID - and delighted that we were able to take advantage of the occasion to get this, unusual, lab picture. I’m not sure we’ll ever top this one…
Congratulations Tamina & Johns!
Fresh news from Egypt, and the picture speaks for itself. Congratulations Amany!
It’s been almost exactly a year since we got everyone together (outside!) for a hike, and we were able to have a long overdue social today. Hiding behind us is a potluck including some remarkable fruits of a bake-off between Rabia and Felix, but ‘hiding’ in the foreground is the reason this was a particularly special gathering - the sashes on both Amany and Tamina! Big events in the coming months for both of them.
Yes, yes, I know the campy alliterations have got to go at some point, but this one was too easy. Today, Amany was awarded the Fred and Helen Knight Enrichment Award! She sent me the following emoji, which I am too old and uncool to decode, but I transpose it for you here:
In another alliterative headline, yesterday Rabia was recognized with a Thomas Neilson Scholarship, “Awarded to a Biochemistry graduate student deemed to show the greatest potential as an independent scientist at the time of transfer to the Ph.D. program”. And I couldn’t put it better myself. If the picture’s a little grainy, it’s because I cropped it from our lab social the other day… not exactly a wealth of picture to draw on this year!
Usually, on lab cleanup day I sing the praises of a cleanup, thank everyone for their hard work (and it is hard! There is scrubbing on hands and knees), and show a before-and-after pic - but today, the highlight is that between our two shifts, we managed to get almost everyone in the lab in one place and have lunch together.
Gayatri was just awarded a prestigious Farncombe Studentship to support her upcoming PhD start in the fall, extendible up to 3 years. She’s off to a flying start! I asked her for a recent picture, and she sent me this - in a coat. When the forecast for the next 4 days is above 30 degrees. I guess all of 2021 is ‘recent’.
With case numbers down below 1000/day, we re-opened the lab to limited (5 person) capacity - lifting a lockdown I had implemented to coincide with the provincial stay-at-home order. The team was definitely chomping at the bit to get back in the lab! Now to see if I can find us some filter tips….
In keeping with the alliterations of the last few updates, we’ve published a paper. This is the first research paper from the lab and to say I’m ecstatic would be an understatement. I won’t dig into the paper itself - I just want to highlight how critical the contributions of the authors was here. First, I did not think this was going to be our first paper - it wasn’t even on my radar when I came to McMaster - Rabia and Amany worked bloody hard to move this along quickly! Second, I was convinced we had to do short, 1.5-2 h assays to avoid confounding regrowth - it was thanks to Amany’s insistence and hard work that we wound up with the impressive eradication.
Al-Anany AM, Fatima R, Hynes AP. 2021. Temperate phage-antibiotic synergy eradicates bacteria through depletion of lysogens. Cell Reports 35(8):109172
Boy, there's a lot to celebrate this week - yet again! Wednesday and Thursday were the Faculty of Health Sciences Plenary, and Rabia, Janice, Amany and Tamina put together amazing talks in the restrictive Pecha Kucha format. I was blown away - I honestly thought we’d wind up with 2/3s of the finalists being from our lab! Amany's stellar performance was selected in the top 3, and she got to share a story that will be published later next week (more on that Tuesday the 25th!).
To top it off, Janice was awarded an Outstanding Achievement Award, Alejandra received the PDF Leadership Award. Wow.
It’s a delight to have former students keep me in the loop well after they leave the lab; this week we learned that Neeloufar was accepted to Medical School in Toronto, and that Hiba secured an extremely prestigious (seriously, I’m jealous - don’t look them up) Marie Skłodowska-Curie ESR fellowship to pursue a PhD at University College Cork, starting in September. Which is why the Shamrocks aren’t just a whimsical spring image.
As usual, I’m going to take partial credit for my student’s accomplishments, however unjust that may be.
I’ve recently been bemoaning the inability to adequately celebrate the many accomplishments of the lab and lab members. It turns out that, left to their own devices, the team can take care of themselves; see the celebratory cake. Today we’re celebrating Rabia’s NSERC-CGS-D - a major scholarship. Soon, soon my students won’t have to bake their own cakes.
