News

The Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research (WCMR) is coordinating a campus project screening for COVID using saliva. Professors Trevor Charles and Jozef Nissimov from the Department of Biology, alongside Drs. Patricia Quadros and Carly Huitema of the WCMR have been awarded $120,000 to determine the effectiveness of a new rapid test and help prevent outbreaks on campus.

The WCMR participated in a panel of international experts as part of our membership representing Canada in the international, EU funded project MicrobiomeSupport. The outcome of this workshop and subsequent online survey was to propose a widely accepted definition of 'microbiome', which was just published in the journal Microbiome.

SynBio 4.0; Bringing together the future of biology

May 26-28

by Claire Murphy, Research collaborator   

For this year's World Microbiome day, WatSAM decided to engage the creative side of students on the University of Waterloo campus. A booth was set up with a option to decorate a cookie and design a pinback button with inspiration drawn from various types of petri dishes. The cookies drew in many curious (and hungry) students, and those who had a bit more time sat down and designed a button or grabbed a WatSAM laptop sticker. Students had a blast getting creative while learning and celebrating World Microbiome day.

Come visit the WCMR booth and learn about Microbiome Support at this year's Canadian Society for Microbiology meeting in Sherbrooke Quebec.

Faculty of Science and WCMR members Andrew Doxey and Laura Hug, with University of Waterloo students Kerrin Mendler, Han Chen, and Briallen Lobb have released AnnoTree, a tool that allows the visualization and exploration of a functionally annotated microbial tree of life.

In November 2018 Microbiome Support had their official kick-off meeting in Ottawa Canada.

WCMR members, Trevor Charles and Murray Moo-Young, hosted a workshop on biomanufacturing at UW, June 24-27, as part of a new IPRG collaborative project between UW and the Members of CeBiB at the University of Chile.  Industrial representatives came from GE Healthcare, Sanofi, PnuVax an

Scientists have discovered a new type of Botox.

A new source of the botulinum neurotoxin was discovered by Canadian and American scientists including WCMR member Andrew Doxey in a strain of animal gut bacteria known as Enterococcus faecium. The neurotoxic protein is known for its paradoxical ability to remove wrinkles yet cause botulism, a potentially fatal illness associated with food poisoning.

WCMR members, Kirsten Müller and Josh Neufeld, in collaboration with other researchers have discovered the uniqueness of certain microbial communities among the class Mammalia.