Opening remarks from the organizing committee

1. Dr. Adam Rudner (University of Ottawa) - uOttawa PhageHunters: Phage Discovery, Genome Annotation and More! uOttawa joined the HHMI-supported Science Education Alliance-Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science (SEA-PHAGES) program in 2019 and over the past three years ~130 undergraduates have isolated nearly 200 bacteriophages that infect Microbacterium, Arthrobacter, Mycobacterium, Streptomyces and Gordonia species. Each phage is characterized by plaque morphology, restriction digestion of its purified genome, TEM, and a subset are sequenced, annotated and submitted to GenBank. Many students have continued exploring phage diversity, prophage immunity mechanisms and programmed translational frameshifting of the tail assembly chaperone. Student presenters: Katia Koziel Ly & Nicolas Toex 2. Dr. Helene Deveau (Université Laval) - CRISPR in the CLASSROOM : an update In 2014, we were one of the first universities in the world to introduce an experiment for undergraduate students demonstrating the biological function of the CRISPR-cas system. Since then, the protocol has been improved and the experience now involves 6 weeks of work rather than 3. This is an integrative laboratory at the very end of their training. To interpret their results, students must use knowledge gained in various fields (microbiology, virology, genomics, bioinformatics, molecular biology, microbial ecology, and so on). Student presenter: Alicia Durocher 3. Dr. Corinne Maurice (McGill University) Student presenters: Amy Qian, Cal Koger-Pease, and Hahn Li

Panelists: Dr. Adam Rudner (University of Ottawa), Dr. Helene Deveau (Université Laval), Dr. Corinne Maurice (McGill University) Moderators: Michael Shamash and Jaden Bhogal

Showcasing thesis, project, co-op and summer studentships across Canada

Showcasing thesis, project, co-op and summer studentships across Canada