News

The Waterloo Centre for Microbial Research joined the the Phytobiomes Alliance today in an effort to support sustainable agriculture. The Phytobiomes Alliance is an industry-academic collaborative effort focused on accelerating the sustainable production of food. The WCMR is currently being represented by its director, Trevor Charles.

Shannon Majowicz, member of the WCMR and professor at the school of Public Health and Public Health Systems, University of Waterloo, has been awarded funding by the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) to study the economic and health risks associated with foodborne diseases.

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 Brian Ingalls and Sherry Schiff are part of a team awarded funding through the Global Water Futures program to study the problem of algal and cyanobacterial blooms in lakes and reservoirs.

Shannon Majowicz, member of the WCMR and professor in the school of Public Health and Public Health Systems, has been awarded funding within the 5th Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR).

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

Even Sinorhizobium meliloti suffers from a weight gain once in a while.

Frank Gu, a Waterloo chemical engineering professor and member of the WCMR, is part of the 2017 cohort of the Royal Society of Canada's (RSC) prestigious College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

Last week, the University of Waterloo hosted the 67^th annual Canadian Society of Microbiologists (CSM) conference.

Organized by a committee co-chaired by members of the WCMR: Professor Josh Neufeld and Canada Research Chair Laura Hug from the Department of Biology, the CSM 2017 conference brought together 450 participants for a four-day gathering aimed at promoting new ideas and advances in microbiology.

The WCMR has been officially approved by the University of Waterloo Senate on May 15th, 2017. The official mission of the centre is that it will unify, catalyze, and promote multidisciplinary research at the University of Waterloo that explores and exploits microbes.