September 2021 - After an exciting and productive summer (which included a rafting trip at the Ottawa river), we're at the beginning of a new academic year.
- Pomona is off to a great start of grad school and received an Ontario Graduate Scholarship - congrats!!
- Big welcome to Sabina, Laura K. and Laura D. who are joining us for their Honours thesis projects.
August 2021 - Dr. David Hiscott has published his work partially performed in our lab. In this paper he tested the properties of transparent nanocomposite film that downshifted UV light into visible blue light, and demonstrated increased light intensities and enhanced growth of algae behind this film. Big thanks to Dr. Paul Charpentier (UWO) who led this work.
Hiscott, D.V., Cvetkovska, M., Mumin, A., Charpentier P.A. 2021. Light downshifting silane capped zinc oxide-ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer nanocomposite greenhouse films and their influence on growth rates of photosynthetic green algae. ASC Applied Polymer Materials, in press: doi.org/10.1021/acsapm.1c00396
Hiscott, D.V., Cvetkovska, M., Mumin, A., Charpentier P.A. 2021. Light downshifting silane capped zinc oxide-ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer nanocomposite greenhouse films and their influence on growth rates of photosynthetic green algae. ASC Applied Polymer Materials, in press: doi.org/10.1021/acsapm.1c00396
July 2021 - Pomona is the winner of the Lewin Poster Award at the Phycological Society of America Annual Meeting for her great work on heat stress in Antarctic algae. Congratulations!
May 2021 - We come to the end of another successful academic year, despite the hurdles of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Congratulations to Josephine for being a recipient of the Ontario Graduate School scholarship, well deserved! Josephine is looking at an exciting summer completing an internship with Apollogreen cultivating cannabis
- Andrew and Kieran successfully defended their Honours Thesis Projects - great work and best of luck on your future endeavors!
- The lab is jumping again, big welcome to our newest lab members Kirsten, Peter and Natalija who are supporting our research on polar algae
March 2021 - Mackenzie Poirier is the recipient of the 2nd place prize for Best Oral Presentation at the 2021 Plant Sciences Graduate Students Symposium (Physiology and Ecology Session). Congratulations!
February 2021 - UWO241 joins the list of algae with sequenced genomes. In this paper we show that the Antarctic alga UWO241 has an unusually large genome with hundreds of highly similar duplicated genes involved in diverse cellular processes, some of which we argue are aiding its survival in the Antarctic via gene dosage. Big thanks to Xi Zhang and Dr. David Smith for all their hard work on this paper, and looking forward to more exciting UWO241 stories
Zhang, X., Cvetkovska, M., Morgan-Kiss, R., Hüner, N.P.A., Smith, D.R. 2021. Draft genome sequence of the Antarctic green alga Chlamydomonas sp. UWO241. iScience 24(2): 102084
January 2021 - Happy New Year and many wishes for a good semester. The lab is mostly up and running, but we're all taking many precautions to limit the spread of COVID-19. This includes online lab meetings. Thanks to Josephine for taking this screenshot.
October 2020 - Welcome to the lab! This year we are welcoming Lyn and Josephine who are starting their MSc degrees, and Andrew and Kieran who are joining as Honours Thesis students. Starting new projects in a middle of a pandemic is not an easy task, and our project involve a remote component this semester. Welcome and good luck!
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July 2020 - Congratulations Mackenzie for receiving an Ontario Graduate School scholarship. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to receive this highly-competitive award, well done!
June 2020 - Exciting news in the Cvetkovska lab, we are joining a team of researchers to study various aspects of cannabis growth through an NSERC CREATE program in "Quality Assurance and Quality Control for Cannabis".
Check out the webpage to learn more about the program and stay tuned for more details.
Check out the webpage to learn more about the program and stay tuned for more details.
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May 2020 - The new paper on our favorite extremophile UWO241 is out, in collaboration with the lab of Dr. Rachel Morgan-Kiss at Miami University. This work suggests that sustained cyclic electron flow in UWO241 does lead to sustained growth and osmotic adjustment in the extreme conditions of the Antarctic Lake Bonney. This paper was highlighted in a 'News and Views' article Kalra I., Wang X., Cvetkovska M., Jeong J., McHague W., Zhang R., Hüner N.P.A., Yuan J.S., Morgan-Kiss R. 2020 The Antarctic Chlamydomonas sp. UWO241 exhibits constitutively high cyclic electron flow and rewired metabolism under high salinity. Plant Physiology 183: 588–601 |
March 2020 - We survived the first year, many thanks to all the lab members! We preemptively celebrated the end of the academic year mere weeks before the COVID-19 shutdown. The beautiful (and delicious) "anatomically correct" Chlamydomonas cake is courtesy of the talented Pomona Osmers
And big congratulations to Pomona for receiving the Jack Cornett Passion for Life and Science award for her critical thinking, passion, dedication and enthusiasm for science and life. Good work!
November 2019 - Michelle Tran is the proud recipient of the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) Scholarship. This makes Michelle not only the first student to join the Cvetkovska lab, but also the first student to win an award in our lag. Congrats Michelle, well deserved!
October 2019 - Check out the newest paper on extremophilic Chlamydomonadaleans from Lake Bonney, Antarctica. This short communication compares the two extremophilic species, Chlamydomonas sp. UWO241 and Chlamydomonas sp. ICE-MDV, suggesting different ways that these two related algal species perform chlorophyll biosynthesis in the extremely light-limited environment of the frozen Lake Bonney.
Smith D.R., Cvetkovska M., Hüner N.P.A. Morgan-Kiss R. 2019. Presence and absence of light-independent chlorophyll biosynthesis among Chlamydomonas green algae in an ice-covered Antarctic lake. Communicative & Integrative Biology, 12: 148-150
Smith D.R., Cvetkovska M., Hüner N.P.A. Morgan-Kiss R. 2019. Presence and absence of light-independent chlorophyll biosynthesis among Chlamydomonas green algae in an ice-covered Antarctic lake. Communicative & Integrative Biology, 12: 148-150
June 2019 - The website is up and running and so is the lab! We still have a while to go and lots of empty lab chairs to fill, but the space is starting to resemble a functioning research lab (green algae included). I was very lucky to inherit a large space with a lot of useful equipment which has been great in getting us up to speed quickly. We are starting the first experiments and looking forward to new results!
