We posted two new preprints! One is on the conservation of transcriptional responses in coevolved microsporidia and hosts, and the other is on identifying wild C. elegans isolates with sensitivity or resistance to differnt microsporidia species. See threads here and here.
Yin and Angcy gave great presentations on these stories at the Evolutionary Biology of Caenorhabditis and Other Nematodes conference held in McMaster!
The new microsporida book is finally out including our chapter on determinants of microsporidia infection and host specificity!
Also we were awared an Ontario Early Resercher award! Here is an interview talking about some of our recent work in understanding microsporidia.
The lab celebrated the holidays and the end of the year by opening gifts from some thoughtful secret santa’s and indulging in lots of sugary treats!
A couple of weeks we had our second annual MicrosporidaFest. Thanks to all the speakers, participants, and co-organizer Jonathan Snow for making this a great meeting!
Conference logo by Alexandra Willis
Belated congratulations to everyone for being awarded the following fellowships this year:
University of Toronto open fellowship - Hala and Yin
Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master's - Angcy
NSERC undergraduate student research award - Jason
Graduate and Life Sciences Education Undergraduate Summer Research Project Studentship - Ronesh Sukhdeo
Undergraduate Summer Research Program - Brandon and Jerry
Brandon’s paper describing the identification and characterization of microsporidia inhibitors of invasion and proliferation is now available as a preprint! See thread for details.
Hala’s paper describing the discovery an an antibacterial protein necessary for microsporidia invasion is now available as a preprint! See thread for more info.
To celebrate after not being in the same place together in almost a year, we ran around Trinity Bellwoods looking for brightly colored pipe cleaners!
The paper by Brandon, Ronesh, Jerry, and Jason is now published! Checkout this thread for more info. We also have set up a Google form for contributing new species so the database can be continually updated. Click this link for details.
