Important lab cleaning duty: the popcorn machine

Spinning some lysate. For comparison, F1 engines hit a maximum of 15,000 rpm (well, maybe they're not going that high this year...) #chemsky

Featuring research from the Auclair lab's Dr. Jinming Guan (PhD 2018) and Annica Chu (MSc 2021), this article continues a long, fruitful partnership between the Auclair and Saliba labs in pursuit of antimalarial and antiplasmodial small molecules.

The Plasmodium falciparum PPCS is a unique heteromeric complex with prokaryote-like activity and is a target of pantothenate analogs PPCS in the P. falciparum CoA biosynthesis pathway forms a heteromeric complex, uses CTP instead of ATP, and is a drug target.

NEW ARTICLE: In Science Advances, an investigation of the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum's PPCS enzyme, part of the CoA biosynthesis pathway.
A collaboration between the Auclair, Creek, Corry, Strauss, and Saliba groups, spanning Canada and Australia. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Some updates:

The Auclair lab congratulates Aracelli Chang on a successful Master's thesis submission!

And we're happy to officially welcome Dr. Jacob Pierscianowski back as a post-doc! Dr. Jake defended his thesis with us last year.

Small Molecule Restores Itaconate Sensitivity in Salmonella enterica: A Potential New Approach to Treating Bacterial Infections Become more sensitive: Although new antibiotics and resistance inhibitors provide temporary solutions to resistance, they are bound to become obsolete. In this work, we propose a new approach, coined...

One decade ago: the Auclair lab first examined small molecules to resensitize bacteria to macrophages. #chemsky #biosky

doi.org/10.1002/cbic...

It's a full queue kind of day #chemsky

Congratulations to Natalia for receiving a PROTEO graduate scholarship! proteo.ca/en/news-and-...

Freezer defrosting day means freezer sorting day #chemsky

First thiol smell of the new year. And it's not even a particularly noxious one! #chemsky

We're officially back for the new year. The built-up freezer ice looks so neat it's almost a shame to de-ice it all.

This is our freezer for the next few hours #chemsky

#onthebeamlines #bacteria #salmonella #legionella #pseudomonas #yersinia #tuberculosis | Canadian Light Source Inc. / Centre canadien de rayonnement synchrotron #OnTheBeamlines: Itaconate is a small molecule our immune cells make when fighting bacteria. Some #bacteria, however, fight back: they use a three-step enzyme pathway to break down itaconate so it’s n...

Check out some of the great work being done by our collaborators in the Schmeing lab in Biochemistry!
In partnership with the Canadian Light Source's beamline, they're examining the structure and workings of itaconate-degrading enzymes.

#chemsky #biochemsky

www.linkedin.com/posts/canlig...

Prof. Auclair presented at the McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity (MI4) annual symposium last week!

Come find us at @concordia.ca Loyola campus for CBGRC this Friday!

NEW PREPRINT:

An extensive structure-activity relationship investigation of pantetheinamides and their ability to inhibit Salmonella typhimurium.

We investigate the mechanisms of action of these compounds and their use with in vivo mouse models.

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

From the Auclair lab: Dr. Jacob Pierscianowski, Dr. Dustin Duncan, Dr. Blue Lan, Dr. Rohit Kholiya, Suzana Diaconescu-Grabari, Ahmed B. Abdelaal, Aracelli Chang, Shay Heans, Dr. Sanjay Campbell, Dr. Alexandre Pierret.

With collaboration from the groups of Profs. Schmeing, Findlay, and Lupien.

NEW PREPRINT:

An extensive structure-activity relationship investigation of pantetheinamides and their ability to inhibit Salmonella typhimurium.

We investigate the mechanisms of action of these compounds and their use with in vivo mouse models.

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Here's some more balanced centrifuge arrangements #chemsky

We're incredibly proud to announce Dr. Jacob Pierscianowski has officially defended his PhD thesis!
Congratulations to Dr. Jake on the amazing work.

Good Wordle yesterday.

Update: purified it anyways. Fraction looks reasonably pure. Now let's see the activity tests. #chemsky

The Auclair Lab welcomes two new members!

Maya Gaylor, co-supervised by Prof. Lupien in Microbiology and Immunology, will be working on our antimicrobial projects.

Dr. Alana Rangaswamy is a recent graduate from the Keillor lab @uottawa.ca and will focus on enzyme and depolymerization efforts.

Admin got up yesterday at 7 in the morning to perform a transformation that probably didn't work. One (1) colony on the plates. This is the #chembiosky life.

Fun fact: we scheduled our lab cleanup day a few weeks ago, and the second we finished up, we got a notification that we were having a safety inspection the very next Monday.

Talk about good timing #chemsky

Many members of the Auclair lab hosted and attended the student-led Careers After Chemistry conference! #CAC2025 #chemsky

Literal green chemistry #chemsky

Doing a little setup for our new baby 👀

New instrument 🔜🔜🔜

Sign up for McGill Chemistry's Careers After Chemistry 2025 conference! Registration ends September 5.

cacmcgill.wixsite.com/cac2025/regi...