December 19, 2024
Nambara lab reveals plants’ exquisitely tuned responses to high humidity
CSB plant scientists have identified the finely tuned way plants adjust to high humidity conditions. These results provide important insights, as high humidity conditions will be experienced more often by Canadian crops due to increased rainfall and flooding. Professor Eiji Nambara led this…
December 18, 2024
Graduate student excellence earns impressive awards
Graduate students in the Department of Cell & Systems Biology cover a broad range of fields, including plant science, neuroscience, cell biology, infectious disease research, endocrinology and systems biology. The discoveries these students are making and their contributions to the Department…
December 16, 2024
Pyruvate paradox resolved by careful carbon flux analysis from Dr Sonia Evans
Dr Sonia Evans in the Phillips Lab has solved the "pyruvate paradox" by showing Rubisco as the main source of pyruvate in chloroplasts. The flow of carbon within a plant cell determines how fatty acids, amino acid and isoprenoids are synthesized from the three carbon precursor pyruvate. For…
November 28, 2024
CSB support helps Falling Walls Lab Toronto winner get close look at science in Germany
Adnan Sharif broke ground on his interest in plant science research with an undergraduate project on plant immunity in Prof Keiko Yoshioka's lab. He was inspired to move on to graduate studies in the Faculty of Engineering, where he developed sustainable synthetic hydroponic soil. Sharif went on to…
November 27, 2024
Prof McFarlane’s achievements lead to renewal of CRC Chair in Plant Cell Biology
Professor Heather McFarlane has received important support for her research on plant cell walls; her CRC Chair in Plant Cell Biology has been renewed, providing $100,000 in additional funding. “My renewal as Canada Research Chair in Plant Cell Biology is a tremendous honour and a huge vote of…
October 29, 2024
Visualizing a healthy future for our plants
Nicholas Provart is recipient of a $2.5M grant from NSERC to build tools that visualize a healthy future for our plants as part of the C-SPIRIT team. C-SPIRIT is a global project that aims to address the grand challenge of stabilizing food production through harnessing natural chemical diversity…
October 18, 2024
Lumba lab eavesdrops on the secret language of soil molecules
There is a silent conversation going on under your feet; plant roots are communicating with soil fungi through a language of small molecules. Until now, the complex genetics of these fungi made it difficult to study how they perceive small molecules directly. The Lumba lab and the McCourt lab at…
October 15, 2024
Drosophila embryo cells align under pressure through unusual cytoskeletal arrangements
The Harris Lab has discovered that the geometry of the fruit fly embryo creates a crystal-like tissue structure. This revelation was published in the prestigious journal Development as “Confinement promotes nematic alignment of spindle-shaped cells during Drosophila embryogenesis“. Professor Tony…
September 18, 2024
Putting a cap on the cortex in Drosophila embryo requires pull from the centrosome
The Harris lab has revealed unexpected details about the puppetmasters of the cell in a new paper from Rebecca Tam in Journal of Cell Biology. Centrosomes are organelles that send microtubule threads throughout the cell. Molecular motors pull on these threads to move cellular structures around…
September 13, 2024
Outstanding research earns Gold Medal for Prof Daphne Goring
CSB Professor Daphne Goring has been awarded the CSPB Gold Medal, the highest honour from the Canadian Society of Plant Biologists (CSPB). Goring is being celebrated for her ground-breaking research on flowering plants that revealed fundamental aspects of biology in the molecular processes that…