It is important for all of us, no matter our role in BioZone, to follow the advice issued by the CHE H&S committee late last week. If you feel sick at any point or show flu-like symptoms PLEASE stay home until you feel well again. If your symptoms are consistent with COVID-19, contact Toronto Public Health (TPH) for information on what steps to take.
When in doubt, contact TPH. The TPH website has real-time updates of the situation regarding the virus in our city. Keep an eye on your university email inbox for updates regarding the situation on campus.
Additionally, those who feel healthy also need to take precautions. Wash your hands thoroughly and often, especially if you use the common areas in BZ on a regular basis.
By following these simple steps, you will be helping to minimize the impact of both influenza and COVID-19 on our larger community at the University. Please remain alert and stay tuned for event cancellations. If any BZ events or workshops are cancelled due to COVID-19, you will be notified via email.
We hope we can all take care of one another by doing what is right for everyone. Thank you for your cooperation at this important time.
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👏 T H A N K Y O U S E A N ! 👏
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In late February we said goodbye to our wonderful BZ Executive Director Sean Caffrey, who is moving on to a new position at the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation (VPRI). On behalf of all BioZone, we will miss you!
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Sean started as Executive Director at BZ in June 2015 and was instrumental in keeping professors, staff, students, and external partners all connected and moving forward.
We are very grateful for all the amazing work he has done here, particularly with the implementation of our SharePoint site, BZ Portal, BZ website, and Microsoft Teams to name a few.
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Furthermore, Sean was involved in a lot of grant writing, and while overseeing operations and the Mass Spec Facility, he helped to start up spin-off companies. He also oversaw the BZ Symposium and Horizons events.
Sean has always been kind, friendly, approachable and a multi-tasking extraordinaire. He is also a very talented photographer who has been published in National Geographic, and has a company called Noumenal Images. Sean has done the BZ portraits for staff and students and was also the photographer at various weddings of BioZone family members such as those of Prof. Elizabeth Edwards' son, Olivia Molenda, and Fei Luo. Sean will also be the photographer at Susie's son's wedding this year!
Thank you Sean for all the incredible work that you have done at BZ and we wish you the very best at your new position. They're lucky to have you!
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Nazaré Ferly (visiting PhD student, Edwards lab) and Sagar Lahiri (PDF, Mahadevan lab) have recently joined the BioZone family. We welcome you Nazaré and Sagar!
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🚨 S A V E T H E D A T E 🚨
Saturday, May 9th 2020
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Science Rendezvous is a great event that takes place every year and gets children and their families excited about science through hands-on scientific demonstrations that are sure to awaken their curiosities. What's even better is that us BioZoners get to prepare an activity!
After the success of our agar art activity last year, we're bringing back our little fluorescent E. coli to make more beautiful artwork (see an example below)!
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If you are interested in helping out (and why wouldn't you be, when it's such a fun event!?), please register as a volunteer! We need volunteers for both the day of the event, and on the organizing committee leading up to the event.
Hope to see you there!
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Register now as a CREATE for BioZone member! The CREATE for BZ program connects bioscience and bioengineering researchers with experts in leadership, entrepreneurship, law, and open science to establish a training hub producing graduates with alternative perspectives and dynamic, adaptable skills needed to grow Canada's share of the global circular bioeconomy.
Click here to see the recruitment flyer with more details. To access the registration forms needed to join CREATE for BZ, click below.
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The CREATE program will provide students with the skills needed to lead Canada's transition to a sustainable circular bioeconomy. Learning experiences include annual workshops in:
- Accelerating innovation through open science and novel business models.
- Improving data fluency through programming and using, sharing, and visualizing large omics datasets.
- Evaluation of biotechnologies using TEA and LCA methodologies.
- Science communication and leadership training.
CREATE students are also eligible to access funds for international research exchanges and funds to support company creation.
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Data Visualization - March 20th (10 am–3:30 pm)
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The CREATE Data Visualization and Tableau Workshop on March 20th is now at full capacity! We hope to see you there!
This workshop will be a great opportunity to get trained on an industry leading data visualization / analytics platform. The workshop is organized by the CREATE for BZ team and hosted by UofT Libraries at Robarts Library. This is a great workshop for BZ students, PDFs, and members interested in an introduction to data visualization theory and tools!
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Open Science Workshop - Date TBD
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Keep an eye out for the second Open Science Workshop! This workshop will focus on Intellectual Property & Innovation. Stay tuned for more information!
This is the workshop for you if you want to learn how open science principles can accelerate scientific research and knowledge translation. It will feature various case studies and learnings from a variety of industries, with executives from Dupont, Red Hat, The Neuro, and more!
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Our fellow BioZoner Kiki Chan (PhD student, Diosady lab) has been announced as the recipient of a 2019 Engineers Canada Manulife Scholarship.
She has been awarded this scholarship on the basis of her important research surrounding the feasibility of using stock cubes to deliver micronutrients to people worldwide. Congratulations! You make BZ proud!
Learn more about Kiki's research here.
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BioZone is now accepting applications for the position of Executive Director!
Reporting to the BZ Scientific Director, and with BZ staff, as well as with the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering (FASE) Advancement Team and the UofT Innovations and Partnership Office (IPO), the Executive Director will play a leading role in the solicitation of funds to support BioZone operations on an on-going, sustainable basis.
Find out more about this position here and forward the link to anyone who may be interested in applying!
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BZ council would like to thank everyone who came out to our Game Night on February 4th!
We all had a great time playing so many exciting board games and enjoying the delicious snacks!
Playing together, devising strategies, and competing against one another was a shared experience that helped us all bond! The most popular games were Codenames, Unstable Unicorns, and Sushi Go Party!
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If you didn't get a chance to come to our game night, we hope to see you at our next mini-bonding event!
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Last February 4th, BioZone received a special visit from Jeff Yurek, the current Ontario Minister for the Environment, Conservation and Parks.
Guided by Prof. Elizabeth Edwards and Dr. Nigel Guilford, the minister toured our facilities to learn more about our sustainability-related research. The BZ equipment featured in this guided tour included Daisy (our anaerobic digester) as well as our fermenter facility.
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The Mass Spec User Meeting, held on February 26th, was an enlightening experience into the broad and many applications we use MS for in BioZone.
Thank you to all the speakers who provided wonderful insights into their work and who highlighted the exciting aspects of their research! On this occasion, Prof. Elodie Passeport gave an illuminating talk regarding the fundamental principles of Isotopic Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS) as well as how it is applied to real world sample analysis.
Additionally, Prof. Michael Phillips spoke about his customized apparatus for the controlled cultivation of Arabidopsis (with regards to temperature, airflow, light), as well as the incorporation of sample quenching/preparation into the same design, which allows for automated, high-throughput sample processing.
The workshop also included a series of presentations from users of the MS facility. Langping Wu (Passeport lab) spoke about using IRMS to assess site contamination, Scott Proulx (Mahadevan lab) spoke about the use of solid phase extraction (SPE) to clean up difficult-to-analyze samples, Alexander Imbault (Farnood lab) spoke on the identification of photocatalytic products, Olanrewaju Raji (Master lab) covered the use of targeted fragmentation (MS2) for small molecule structural elucidation, and Courtney Toth (Edwards lab) spoke about the use of GC-MS for the identification and elucidation of hydrocarbon based compounds/metabolites.
A special thanks to Robert Flick for his efforts in organizing this workshop!
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The annual faculty-wide Graduate Research Days (GRD) took place from February 20th to 22nd and was a huge success!
For this event, prospective graduate students from all over Canada gather in Toronto for a weekend during which they get to know the graduate department of their interest, and interact with current students and faculty. GRD is one of the largest events organized by the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.
BioZone was represented well by all the poster and lab tour volunteers, who on behalf of their research groups showed off the exciting research we do at BZ to all the prospective students who attended this huge event. Our very own BZ alumnus Vik Pandit gave a talk at the Faculty, Student & Alumni Dinner.
Thank you to all the BZ staff and students who participated in GRD for their hard work!
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- Molenda, O., Puentes Jácome, L.A., Cao, X., Nesbø, C.L., Tang, S., Morson, N., Patron, J., Lomheim, L., Wishart, D.S., and Edwards, E.A. (2020). Insights into origins and function of the unexplored majority of the reductive dehalogenase gene family as a result of genome assembly and ortholog group classification. Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts. 2020. DOI: 10.1039/C9EM00605B
- Semper, C, Stogios, P, Meziane‐Cherif, D, Evdokimova, E, Courvalin, P, Savchenko, A. (2020). Structural characterization of aminoglycoside 4′‐O‐adenylyltransferase ANT(4′)‐IIb from Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Protein Science. 29(3):758-767.
- Kanger, K., Guilford, N.G., Lee, H., Nesbø, C.L., Truu, J. and Edwards, E.A. (2020). Antibiotic resistome and microbial community structure during anaerobic co-digestion of food waste, paper and cardboard. FEMS Microbiology Ecology. 96(2):fiaa006.
- Stogios, P.J. and Savchenko, A. (2020). Molecular mechanisms of vancomycin resistance. Protein Science. 29(3):654-669.
- Fedorchuk, T.P., Khusnutdinova, A.N., Evdokimova, E., Flick, R., Di Leo, R., Stogios, P., Savchenko, A. and Yakunin, A.F. (2020). One-pot biocatalytic transformation of adipic acid to 6-aminocaproic acid and 1,6-hexamethylenediamine using carboxylic acid reductases and transaminases. Journal of the American Chemical Society. 142(2):1038-1048
- Lau, C.H.F., DeJong, E.N., Dussault, F., Carrillo, C., Stogios, P.J., Savchenko, A. and Topp, E. (2020). A penicillin-binding protein that can promote advanced-generation cephalosporin resistance and genome adaptation in the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents. 105896.
- Hersch, S.J., Watanabe, N., Stietz, M.S., Manera, K., Kamal, F., Burkinshaw, B., Lam, L., Pun, A., Li, M., Savchenko, A. and Dong, T.G. (2020). Envelope stress responses defend against type six secretion system attacks independently of immunity proteins. Nature Microbiology. 1-9.
- Kim, T., Stogios, P.J., Khusnutdinova, A.N., Nemr, K., Skarina, T., Flick, R., Joo, J.C., Mahadevan, R., Savchenko, A. and Yakunin, A.F. (2020). Rational engineering of 2-deoxyribose-5-phosphate aldolases for the biosynthesis of (R)-1, 3-butanediol. Journal of Biological Chemistry. 295(2):597-609.
- Lieven, C., Beber, M.E., Olivier, B.G., Bergmann, F.T., Ataman, M., Babaei, P., Bartell, J.A., Blank, L.M., Chauhan, S., Correia, K., Diener, C., [...] and Zhang, C. (2020). MEMOTE for standardized genome-scale metabolic model testing. Nature Biotechnology.1-5.
- Mottiar, Y., Gierlinger, N., Jeremic, D., Master, E.R. and Mansfield, S.D. (2019). Atypical lignification in eastern leatherwood (Dirca palustris). New Phytologist.
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Please email us if you have something to add to the next edition of the BioZone Newsletter
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