Many members of the McFarLab gave excellent presentations at the Eastern Regional Meeting of the Canadian Society of Plant Biologists today and Jenny was awarded one of the prizes for best talk. Congratulations, Jenny!
Update: Jenny’s award has been highlighted on the CSB website.
Heather is the (virtual) invited seminar speaker at the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Purdue University today. Thanks to Xiaohui Li for the invitation!
Our collaboration with Yi Zhang’s group at Beijing Normal University that was recently published PNAS has been highlighted in Nature Plants. The research highlight article emphasizes the intriguing link between energy sensing and actin cytoskeleton dynamics that was uncovered by Dai et al.
Together with our collaborator Prof. Berit Ebert, at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, the McFarlane lab has been awarded a 1-year Catalyst grant from the NSERC Alliance International Program. These funds will support a new collaborative project between the McFarlane and Ebert labs to study how cell wall synthesis is partitioned within the cell.
Heather is the invited seminar speaker at the Department of Biology at McGill University today. She will update everyone on the recent research from the lab and join the graduate students for lunch to talk about her career since graduating with an MSc from McGill.
The actin cytoskeleton is constantly remodelled during daily activity of a cell. However, this remodelling requires a constant input of cellular energy in the form of ATP. Our collaboration with Yi Zhang’s group at Beijing Normal University is now available online with PNAS.
This work reports that the TOR complex, a master regulatory hub that integrates cellular energy information to coordinate cell growth and metabolism, controls cellular ATP levels in plant cells. Interestingly, low ATP levels cause reduced actin dynamics in plant cells, providing insight into how plant cells handle low energy situations.
The McFarLab welcomes seven fall-term undergraduate students to the lab this week:
Evan Berthelot joins the lab as a new CSB498 student.
Lauren Hall joins the lab as a work-study student.
Eskandar Mohammad transitions from being a summer work-study student to conducting a CSB498 project.
Leonardo Tullo continues in the group as a work-study student working with Eduardo.
Rylan Vincent transitions from being a volunteer student to conducting a CSB498 project.
Carlos Wang will continue volunteering virtually and working on his meta-analysis project.
Vicky Zhu will continue her CSB URA work as a CSB498 project student.
Welcome to the McFarLab, everyone!
Natalie has been awarded a prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship in Science and Technology (QEII-GSST). These merit-based awards are offered to the top applicants to the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) program to encourage excellence in graduate studies at publicly-assisted universities in Ontario, such as UofT. Congratulations, Natalie!
Natalie is off to visit our collaborator, Prof. Berit Ebert, at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany for the next three months. Natalie has been awarded an NSERC Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement to support her travel and she will be conducting biochemical analyses of cell wall samples. Congratulations Natalie and good luck with your experiments!