Tareq Joins the Lab

Tareq Islam officially joins the Boucher Lab for his Ph.D.! He is originally from Dhaka, Bangladesh. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Microbiology from the University of Dhaka. He worked as a Senior Research Officer in the Enteric and Food Microbiology Lab at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) with Dr. Munirul Alam. He also worked as a visiting researcher in Dr. Rita Colwell-Dr. Anwar Huq's lab at the University of Maryland, College Park during his tenure at icddr,b. Back in the summer of 2014, Tareq assisted Yan and Tania during their field work in Bangladesh to isolate Vibrio cholerae from various regions of the Ganges Delta.

Tareq is the recipient of two awards – the University of Alberta Doctoral Recruitment Scholarship and the Alberta Innovates – Technology Futures Graduate Student Scholarship.

Welcome Tareq!

Tareq is ready for winter in Edmonton

MBL 2015 Advanced Research Courses – Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Paul is excited to attend the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) Advanced Research Courses in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He will join two courses: Workshop on Molecular Evolution (July 20-29, 2015) and Strategies and Techniques for Analyzing Microbial Population Structures (August 5-15, 2015).

In 2002, Yan attended the Microbial Biodiversity Course back when he was a Ph.D. student in Ford Doolittle's lab (Dalhousie University).

MBL is an affiliate of the University of Chicago. The workshop is supported by grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and the National Institutes of Health.

Participants of the Workshop on Molecular Evolution (top) and Strategies and Techniques for Analyzing Microbial Population Structures (bottom) courses at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts

2015 CIFAR-IMB General Meeting – Victoria, British Columbia

The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) held its annual conference for members (and their students) of the Integrated Microbial Biodiversity (IMB) Program at the Westin Bear Mountain Golf Resort & Spa, Victoria, British Columbia on May 27-29, 2015.

Yan was accompanied by Paul. Yan gave a talk entitled "Interspecies genetic interaction in bacteria," and Paul presented a poster of his current work entitled "Ecological differentiation of Vibrio cholerae clonal complexes."

Origin of Lignin Biosynthesis

A new paper, "Ancient origin of the biosynthesis of lignin precursors," was published today in Biology Direct, with Ph.D. student Leen Labeeuw and Dr. Rebecca Case (Department of Biological Sciences) as lead and senior authors, respectively. The authors propose that the genes associated with the biosynthesis of p-coumaryl alcohol, the simplest lignin monomer, found in algal genomes likely evolved long before the transition of photosynthetic eukaryotes to land.

As co-authors, Yan contributed his expertise in phylogenetic analysis and was involved in the design of the experiment, and Dr. Patrick Martone (University of British Columbia) provided novel gene sequences for the study.

Major evolutionary events hypothesized in the evolution of the lignin biosynthetic pathway across the eukaryotic tree (from Labeeuw et al., 2015)

FGSR Teaching Award for Tania

Tania is one of the recipients of the 2015 Graduate Student Teaching Award from the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research (FGSR). Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer, Dean of the Faculty of Science, hosted a lunch get-together for all awardees at the Faculty Club. Congratulations!

Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer and Tania during the awarding ceremony

2015 AITF Graduate Student Scholarship Awardees

Congratulations to Tania and incoming Ph.D. student Tareq for receiving the Alberta Innovates – Technology Futures (AITF) Graduate Student Scholarships!

Tania is also currently a holder of the NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship  –  Doctoral award. Tareq will join the lab in the fall and is also the recipient of the University of Alberta Doctoral Recruitment Scholarship.

Tania's BacPac Presentation

Tania will present her current work at the seventh installment of the Bacterial Pathogens Club (BacPac) meeting for the 2014/2015 season.

BacPac is held every first Thursday of the month from (except January) during the fall and winter terms. It is organized by Dr. Stefan Pukatzki (Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology).

Yan Featured in the "Brock Biology of Microorganisms"

Happy New Year! What a great start of the year for the Boucher Lab.

Yan's research is featured in the 14th edition of the Brock Biology of Microorganisms (chapter 12, p. 347), with an electron microscopy picture contribution by Paul. To Paul's horror, the picture is attributed to...

"Phil Kirchberger, University of Alberta"


Congratulations Yan and PHIL!

Brock Biology of Microorganisms 14th edition cover (by Pearson Education, Inc., 2015)

Fabini's BacPac Presentation

Fabini will present his current work at the fourth installment of the Bacterial Pathogens Club (BacPac) meeting for the 2014/2015 season.

BacPac is held every first Thursday of the month from (except January) during the fall and winter terms. It is organized by Dr. Stefan Pukatzki (Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology).