Today, McFarLab MSc student, Gaeun Shin, was awarded the CSB Elizabeth Ann Wintercorbyn Award: “One award is made annually to a graduate student in the Department of Cell & Systems Biology engaged in research work which is likely to prove beneficial to Agriculture”
Congratulations, Gaeun!
Today, several McFarLab members are attending the Canadian Society of Plant Biologists Eastern Regional Meeting, which is a virtual meeting this year. Carlo, Eduardo, and Gaeun will all give presentations.
Heather’s Canada Research Chair in Plant Cell Biology has been renewed. Tier 2 Canada Research Chairs recognize “exceptional emerging researchers, acknowledged by their peers as having the potential to lead in their field.”
Today, Heather is the seminar speaker in the Plant Molecular Biology seminar series at the Institute for Plant Cell Biology and Biotechnology at Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, Germany
Heather is off to Germany to visit our collaborator Prof. Berit Ebert at at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany. Heather’s trip is generously sponsored by a RUB Visiting International Professor award from the RUB Research School. On Nov 7, she will present a research seminar to the Department for Biology and Biotechnology.
Many components of the plant cell wall are synthesized inside the cell at the Golgi apparatus and must be secreted before they can be integrated into the plant cell wall. Our new paper in Developmental Cell shows that the plant cell wall polysaccharide xyloglucan requires side chains for effective secretion following its biosynthesis in the Golgi apparatus, as production of side-chain-deficient xyloglucan causes intracellular aggregations of proteins and polysaccharides. These results highlight the importance of polysaccharide structure for efficient secretion to the cell wall. This work was led by recent McFarLab PhD awardee Natalie Hoffmann and demonstrates that some cell wall modifications may need to occur after polysaccharide synthesis and secretion, suggesting that cell wall-localized, polysaccharide-modifying enzymes might make exciting targets for biotechnology.
Natalie’s striking image of one of these dramatic intracellular aggregations has been selected as the cover image for this issue of Developmental Cell and our article has been selected by the editors as a “featured article”.
Free access to the article is temporarily provided via this link.
Today, Heather is the seminar speaker at the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of Minnesota.
The McFarLab welcomes our newest lab member, our brand new TECAN Spark Multimodal plate reader. The Spark will help us conduct high-throughput screening of synthetic reporters of cell wall stress, plus we will also use it for routine experiments to track cell wall signaling (reactive oxygen species bursts, Ca2+ bursts), cell wall composition, fluorescent protein signals, and to quantify DNA and RNA.
Thank you to NSERC for the Research Tools and Instruments Grant that supported this purchase.
6 new BSc students join the lab today:
Stella Chen, Tina Guan, and Elle Nelson have take up work-study positions.
Fayeza Azad starts a CSB498 project working Fabrizio on cross-talk of cell will signaling with other pathways.
Krystyn Kalloo starts a CSB498 project on cell wall signaling and regulation of cell wall secretion.
Jenson McIntyre starts a CSB498 project working with Eduardo on screening for cell wall signaling mutants.
The McFarLab welcomes new MSc student Gaeun Shin. Gaeun is no stranger to the lab since she previously conducted CSB498 and CSB499 project courses in the lab and held a prestigious University of Toronto Excellence Award over the summer. Gaeun will continue her work on how protein phosphorylation is involved in cell wall signal transduction. Welcome back, Gaeun!