丁香园AV

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丁香园AV
Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Correspondent: Christopher Beh

In addition to highlighting the awards and achievements of our faculty, this report salutes two retiring colleagues who were instrumental to our current successes. Dr. Bruce Brandhorst, former Chair and tireless advocate for this Department, became Professor Emeritus this year and he continues to impart his valued knowledge of science and academic administration. Dr. Don Sinclair also formally retired this year. As a teaching award recipient, Dr. Sinclair was a stalwart lecturer who taught many of our core courses. We gratefully thank both Drs. Brandhorst and Sinclair for their service and contribution during the past 15 years since the Department's founding.


Department highlights. Many significant awards were presented to our faculty members this past year. As one of the Department's newest faculty members, we congratulate Dr. Ryan Morin again this year. In addition to his previous awards, Dr. Morin received a CIHR New Investigator Award for his work on applying high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics to study cancer and other heritable and sporadic genetic diseases. We also congratulate Dr. David Vocadlo, who started his Tier I Canada Research Chair this year and received the Teva Canada Award from the Canadian Chemical Society for his work on chemical glycobiology. Finally, we applaud Dr. Steven Jones for becoming a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2014. Dr. Jones, along with MBB Professor Dr. Fiona Brinkman and Adjunct Professor Dr. Marco Marra, was also listed on the Thomson Reuter's "The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds: 2014."

In the past year there were several news-making projects from MBB Department researchers and adjunct faculty. As reported by CBC News, Adjunct Professor Dr. David Granville captured public attention with his observation that mice lacking Granzyme B, a cytolytic protease released by cytotoxic T lymphocytes and nature killer cells, actually prevented skin damage due to aging. In the New York Times, an article described the work by Dr. Dipankar Sen (originally appearing in Nature Chemistry) suggesting that vitamins might be evolutionarily holdbacks from when RNA catalysis dominated primordial life. Dr. Sen generated an RNA that used "vitamin B1 to pull carbon dioxide from another molecule" just like "proteins use B1 for today鈥�" These examples of newsworthy findings represent just a sampling of the research diversity from our faculty.


Faculty promotions. We congratulate Dr. Jonathan Choy on his promotion to tenured Associate Professor as well as Dr. Peter Unrau on his promotion to full Professor. Dr. Choy's research program focuses on the regulation and effects of T cell responses. Dr. Unrau, like Dr. Sen, has made significant contributions towards understanding origins of prebiotic life as proposed by the "RNA World hypothesis." We also congratulate our many successful undergraduates, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows on their many scholarships and research awards.