We have well started summer term and so many new things going on in the lab. Mellissa just came back from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where she spent 2 months learning some molecular docking. Mellissa is an NSERC CGS-M holder and was awarded a Michael Smith foreign study supplement, which made this exciting training opportunity a reality. We are excited to dig into this data, where she is comparing the molecular docking results to our in vitro high throughput screening data to see if the in silico approaches predict the in vitro data.

Both Hunter and Max, our newer graduate students, have been awarded scholarships. Hunter won an NSERC CGS-M and Max and OGS and we are super happy for both of them. Hunter is currently off in France taking advantage of a research opportunity with Sigal Balshine and Grant McClelland that is unrelated to his thesis. Max is here training our Mitacs Global links interns Sydnee and Julia and McMaster undergraduate Clarice. Clarice was a research course student last year working on some enrichment for fish and is doing her thesis in the lab next academic year. This group will begin to test some of our top hits from prior high throughput screening of CYP3A65 and CYP3C1 to assess embryo toxicity. Max’s research is focused on the extrapolation of our in vitro expressed proteins in vivo, using embryo exposures in zebrafish with and without his genes of interest. The CYP3A65 knock out line is from our collaborator, Jed Goldstone ( WHOI) and we hope to first identify if any of the substrates for these enzymes induce embryo toxicity and then will assess whether the KO line has a change in the toxicity or compound metabolism. We hope to screen several compounds this summer in our wild type fish, while the KO lines grow up.

Jack and Mellissa are both in their second year and are working up data and finishing experiments over the summer. They are looking closer and closer to finalizing experiments and data analyses for their thesis.

Lastly, I am looking forward to being on research leave soon. I have a few things on the list for the summer, including getting a renovated fish room fully on line and some grant writing. I will probably also be testing some protein expression parameters, which have proved rather finicky in the last 2 years. Hope everyone else is having a great summer of research.