On December 21, 2023, Natasha defended her MSc. Natasha led a collaborative project between the McPhee lab and the Botelho lab on the role of bacterial filamentation on resistance to antimicrobial peptides. She will be very missed, but we know she’ll do fantastic things moving forward! Congratulations Natasha!

After a long COVID-induced hiatus, the McPhee lab returned to the Canadian Society of Microbiologists meeting, hosted by Dalhousie University in beautiful Halifax, Nova Scotia. Reshmi and Natasha presented their work on Shigella signaling and uropathogenic E. coli filamentation, respectively (and even got out for a hike near Peggy’s Cove).

In August 2022, Arooj successfully defended her MSc work (cosupervised with Dr. Fiona Whelan of the University of Nottingham, UK) on the PmrAB systems of Shigella boydii and Shigella dysenteriae. Arooj had a challenging project, balancing both wet lab and bioinformatic analysis (and the demands of not only one, but two supervisors)! It was a pleasure seeing Arooj’s growth throughout the project and I look forward to seeing what she gets up to next!

At the end of April 2022, an era ended in the McPhee lab with the PhD defense of Youn Hee Cho. Youn Hee has been with the lab since the beginning and was responsible for unpacking the very first boxes of equipment that arrived way back in 2015. She has been the backbone of the lab, responsible for training almost every subsequent undergrad and graduate student who entered the lab since then. It would be impossible to overstate just how much she will be missed. Good luck Yunnie!

On Oct 8th, 2021, Raymond defended his MSc work on heterogeneity in the pmrD gene in Shigella and E. coli. Raymond has been an integral part of the team since joining as an undergraduate in 2018. He initiated all of the Shigella work that is currently happening in the lab and he was a fantastic team player. He was responsible for training of many other undergraduate trainees in the lab and his. We will certainly miss his calm presence in the lab, but he won’t be far away – he’s started a new position at UHN and we hope he’ll continue to pop by the lab from time to time… he’s always welcome here!

On Jul 31, 2019, Adam Khan successfully defended his MSc on heterogeneity in two-component signaling responses in clinical isolates of IBD-associated E. coli. Congratulations Adam!

Youn Hee, Adam and Joe all recently attended the Canadian Society for Microbiologists meeting in Sherbrooke, Quebec. In addition to excellent poutine, craft beer, and some thrilling basketball games, some truly excellent science was also shared by all. Adam received a travel award from the CSM Executive to present his work and Youn Hee gave an update of her work on omptin regulation in Escherichia coli.

In March 2019, Abuzar, Disha, Jasika, Raymond and Anna defended their thesis work in my lab. I’m very pleased with the work they did and excited to see what they do next!

We are excited to see this in print! This work describes the broad phenotypic conservation of E. coli found in IBD patients and argues that a focus on genetic characterization may miss numerous phenotypes that are not readily predicted or predictable. We hope that some of the ideas here gain traction and provoke new ways of thinking about how intestinal microbes might drive changes in the host that are associated with IBD.

https://academic.oup.com/ibdjournal/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/ibd/izy312/5128780?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Michael recently defended his MSc work entitled, “Interactions between adherent-invasive Escherichia coli and host macrophages: a virulence phenotype”. Michael is now working as a clinical data management specialist and we wish him all the best in his future career.