This summer, the McPhee lab is happy to welcome two new undergraduate researchers to the lab. Riasad Aziz is the recipient of a Ryerson Undergraduate Research Opportunities award while Abuzar Abedin is the recipient of NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Award. These awards will support Riasad and Abuzar as they get their projects up and running. Riasad will be working on projects related to PhoP-mediated regulation of polymyxin B and host-defense peptide resistance while Abuzar will examine regulatory circuits that result in altered E. coli morphology to determine whether these alterations change resistance to host-defense peptides.

At the recent Canadian Society for Microbiologists meeting, held right here in Toronto, Mario Vargas and Youn Hee Cho presented posters describing their work in the lab. The conference was great and both Mario and Youn Hee’s work was well received by others attending the conference. Congratulations to both!

At our recent Ryerson University Science Symposium, Youn Hee Cho, Veronica Cojocari, Lauren Phillips and Farid Azadian presented posters describing their progress in the lab. Everyone presented their work incredibly well and they got to spend the day telling other students and faculty about all of their hard work and getting tips on how to move projects forward. Onward and upward!

Dr. McPhee recently attended the annual American Society for Microbiology meeting in New Orleans where he presented his work describing the role of a propanediol utilization system in the fitness of adherent-invasive E. coli. The meeting was a massive event with hundreds of fantastic presentations of new developments in the role of the microbiome in host health and disease, interesting environmental microbiology and loads of great metagenomic research. There might have been some beer consumed as well – but we aren’t telling specifics!