Sigh, too many great students leaving the lab this month and moving on to the next chapter of their lives! Many thanks to Dr. Luana Cunha for 2 years of outstanding contributions to our group! If anyone is looking for an amazing microbiologist, biochemist, team leader, and all-around great human, Dr. Cunha would be an … More Dr. Luana Cunha off to the next adventure!
I’m super proud of Mia Yamoa who just wrapped up her MSc degree! Mia developed a very useful method to screen for plastic degrading enzymes, which is now a big project in the group. Well done Mia, and we’re looking forward to your next chapter in biocatalysis!
Just out in Chemical Science! PhD student Samantha Hollands has just published some of her excellent work on the biosynthesis of the anticancer compound curacozole. This was a project that began nearly 15 years ago in a wonderful collaboration with the Bechthold lab at the Universität Freiburg. Well done Sam!
Samantha was recently accepted into the Dept. of Chemistry accelerated MSc program. The accelerated MSc allows a 4th year student to extend their honours thesis project into an MSc degree. We’re very happy that Sam will continue to be a member of the team, and will keep pushing our new foray into the biosynthesis of … More Samantha Hollands joins Zechel lab for MSc!
The ACS journal Biochemistry has a very long and distinguished history in publishing studies on enzyme mechanisms. In 2019 our lab had the privilege to be invited by John Gerlt (U. Illinois) to submit a manuscript to be part of a dedicated issue on “Current Topics in Mechanistic Enzymology“. This was a huge thrill for … More Mechanistic insight into PhnZ from kinetic isotope effects
Some new faces have appeared in the lab over the last few months! We’re excited to have Dr. Manisha Patel to join the group to help us understand the biosynthesis of cyanobactins. Kendall started off as a 4th year thesis student in our lab then jumped straight into a MSc where she will study substrate … More Welcome Dr. Manisha Patel, Kendall Hupp, Samantha Hollands, and Zed Lu!
The Zechel lab, in collaboration with the labs of Pallitsch and Hammerschmidt (University of Vienna), has discovered a new oxidative enzyme pathway for the degradation of methylphosphonate. This pathway is used by marine bacteria to utilize methylphosphonate, a prominent natural product in the world’s oceans, as an alternate source of inorganic phosphate. The cycling of … More A new fate for methylphosphonate
For over 60 years, only Streptomyces calvus was known to produce the fluorosugar nucleocidin. This is a problem, as S. calvus is a terrible producer of this valuable molecule (about 0.5 mg/L culture). Zechel lab PhD student Ola Pasternak and collaborators from the University of Freiburg have used a genome mining approach to find a … More A new producer of nucleocidin!
On December 3rd DLZ had the privilege of giving a seminar on phosphonate and organofluorine biochemistry to the Dept. of Chemistry at Laval. DLZ thanks Prof. Jean-François Paquin, a leader in the field of organofluorine synthetic methodology, for the invitation and the warm hospitality during his visit.
Welcome to the lab Simanga and Eric! Postdoc Simanga Gama and new MSc student Eric Lawrence joined the lab on May 1st. Dr. Gama hails from Paul Berti’s lab (McMaster University), while Eric is a newly minted Queen’s Chemistry graduate. They will applying their enthusiasm for enzymes to the Phosphonate Enzymology program.