Its a wrap – Thompson et al. in Nat. Commun. published online!
“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
Author Archives: Baenziger Lab
Congratulations to Mackenzie, Farid, and Anna!
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!
Congratulations Dr Thompson!
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!
An excellent award of excellence is being awarded excellently!
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!
Hey! You! Get outta my swamp!
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…
Pac-man wins the day!
The Baenziger lab came through again with a high-end, original and totally professionally made group costume, to take the win at the BMI group costume category on Halloween.
Bon Voyage…everyone?
In the next few months we’ll be seeing Mack, Anna, and Dr Baenziger head off for various temporary stays in France. Anna will sharpen her computational skills, while Mack and Dr B (on a skill-sharpening sabbatical) will work on cryo-EM structures of the nAChR.
Congratulations to Camille, PhD and valedictorian!
Camille successfully defended her thesis during the pandemic, but was finally able to celebrate at summer convocation, not just as a graduate, but as valedictorian and winner of the Governor General’s gold medal! The real achievement was uOttawa’s, for actually getting her to attend convocation.
Mack is on a Neuron paper
Big congrats to Mack, whose third author work on this paper has helped our lab break into the big workd of Cryo-EM structures and analysis, which is a new and very exciting field for us!
The paper uses cryo-EM to solve apo and agonist-bound structures of the Torpedo nicotinic receptor embedded in a lipid nanodisc, which gives an unprecedented “before and after” look at the nAChR in a lipid membrane!
I spy a Nature paper!
Congratulations to Camille on her new first author paper. “A lipid site shapes the agonist response of a pentameric ligand-gated ion channel” is now published in Nature Chemical Biology!
The paper looks into the role of a potential lipid binding site in the functional modulation as well as the desensitization of pentameric ligand-gated ion channels.