Anna very adeptly defended her PhD thesis this week, in a move that surprised no one. She has been a steadily hardworking student since joining the lab, and succeeded in her PhD despite quite a few not insignificant obstacles. We fully anticipate that she will continue to impress, wherever she goes next!
After yet another thrilling monthly meeting of the “Ion channel journal club”, the Baenziger and daCosta labs took to the ice for a lovely evening skate on the Rideau Canal skateway, followed by a delicious pub meal. We’re very lucky to have the canal just steps from main campus – and we’re lucky that the canal was able to open for so many days this year!
The congratulations just keep on coming- now they are due to Anna and Rui Yan on their paper “State-dependent binding of cholesterol and an anionic lipid to the muscle-type Torpedo nicotinic acetylcholine receptor”, which is being published in Communications Biology – Nature.
Honestly, from what we could tell, the real hard work on this paper wasn’t the paper itself, it was uploading the simulation data to the paper’s database.
“A release of local subunit conformational heterogeneity underlies gating in a muscle nicotinic acetylcholine receptor” is now online. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46028-x
Congrats to Mack, Farid and Anna for their recent article “A release of local subunit conformational heterogeneity underlies gating in a muscle nicotinic acetylcholine receptor” accepted in Nature Communications!
In the latest of a series of Mack-related posts, we again congratulate our favourite senior PhD student who successfully defended his thesis today! Mack has already gotten a posting as a post-doc at a lab down in California, and we wish him all the best! We’ll miss him though!
Congratulations are due to Mack, who will receive the Biochemistry Award of Excellence. This is awarded to a PhD student who has demonstrated academic excellence through his/her overall average and research capabilities as well as demonstrated involvement in extracurricular activities related to the Faculty of Medicine or in the community. Way to go, Mack!
The Baenziger lab put on another fun show at the BMI/CMM Halloween costume contest, taking first place for a second year in a row, this time as Shrek! Everyone looked fantastic and did a great job getting into character, but to give credit where credit is due, the real MVP was the original resident of the swamp. Tough as nails, and the first character we see in the first scene in Shrek itself ….the outhouse door!
No pressure for next year…
It’s like looking at the real cast of Shrek!Dragon (Anna), Fiona (Camille), Donkey (Deepansh), Shrek (Dr B.), Outhouse door (Outhouse door), Puss in Boots (Toka) and Lord Farquad (Rui Yan)