Fresh excitement for the Science Rendezvous festival

CSB shared our stories under shady trees as students, staff and faculty presented at Science Rendezvous 2025. Science Rendezvous is an annual science festival across Canada, and we had many new faces from CSB to present our work on UofT's leafy Front Campus. Squeezing in some neuroscience…

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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…

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Undergraduate researchers reveal exciting project results at year-end poster session to earn F Michael Barrett Award

On Friday, April 5th, 2024 students from the CSB497, 498 and 499 independent research programs presented their project results in a poster session held in the Ramsay Wright Building. We would like to thank our judges for their time assessing the posters and presentations. The students who excelled…

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New appointments show that CSB is building and broadening

CSB is building on excellence and broadening our research thanks to two recent appointment by the University of Toronto. Congratulations, Professor Plotnikov! On July 1st, our colleague Sergey Plotnikov received tenure and a promotion to Associate Professor.Plotnikov is a world leading researcher,…

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CSB Researchers earn multiple NSERC awards

Congratulations to Professors in CSB who earned NSERC Discovery and NSERC-RTI grants! NSERC Discovery Grants The Discovery Grant program supports ongoing programs of research with long-term goals. These grants recognize the creativity and innovation that are at the heart of all research advances.…

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CSB project students present their year’s work in research

A year of research by CSB project students culminated in a poster session on March 31st, 2023. The students used the posters to…

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Microscopic detectors of viscosity – Plotnikov lab collaboration reveals how cells measure fluid thickness and move faster despite resistance

Researchers at University of Toronto and Johns Hopkins University have identified a specific cellular structure that allows cells to sense fluid thickness. In their recent Nature Physics article, the group explains how cells respond to thickened fluids and details the effect of viscosity on cell…

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Plotnikov lab finds key to reducing (cellular) stress is spikes of mDia1

When you’re dancing, running or even walking, fibroblast cells stretch and adapt to all your vigorous movements. What allows these dynamic cells in our bodies to keep their shape and position without being torn apart? Fernando Valencia in Sergey Plotnikov’s lab at Cell & Systems Biology has…

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Push and pull – the forces that earn Sergey Plotnikov a prestigious CIHR grant

Prof Sergey Plotnikov studies how cell movement is guided by the stiffness of the tissue around the cell, and a new CIHR grant will allow his lab to continue pushing this work forward. Each day, cells in our body are continuously bombarded by a myriad of biological signals. As you are comfortably…

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Cell biology meets engineering in collaborative XSeed grant for Professor Sergey Plotnikov to study wound closure in fruit flies

CSB Professor Sergey Plotnikov has been awarded XSeed funding to identify protein targets that can accelerate wound healing.  The XSeed program catalyzes cross-disciplinary partnerships between investigators from the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering and other faculties. The grant was…

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