News Archive

[April 12, 2013] Fakhria M. Razeq, Bailey Paterson, and Cara Beatty defended their undergraduate research thesis projects at the annual Carleton Faculty of Science Research Day. Congratulations on all the hard work done and for giving stellar presentations! We celebrated by eating gelato at Stella Luna.

[Nov. - Dec., 2012] Irek Akhmadullin joined the Rowland Lab as a Visiting Scholar for two months. Irek is a Ph.D. candidate studying forestry at Kazan State Agrarian University, Tatarstan, Russia. It was great to have you in the lab Irek! 

[Nov. 30 - Dec. 2, 2012] Micaela Chacon, Fakhria M. Razeq, and Owen Rowland battled their way through an early winter snowstorm to attend the Eastern Regional Meeting of the Canadian Society of Plant Biologists held at Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario. Micaela gave a talk entitled "Amino Acids Important for Conferring Chain-Length Substrate Specificity of Two Arabidopsis Alcohol-Forming Fatty Acyl Reductases" and Fakhria gave a poster presentation entitled "Profiling the root and seed surface lipids of the oilseed crop Camelina sativa". Congratulations to Micaela and Fakhria for giving superb presentations.

[Oct. 1, 2012] Welcome to new Research Associate Jhadeswar Murmu! Prior to joining us, Jhadeswar was a postdoctoral fellow at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada working on plant-pathogen interactions. He will apply his vast molecular biology and biochemistry skills to understand the regulated deposition of suberin.

[Sept. 1, 2012] Welcome to new Ph.D. student Nayana de Silva! Nayana recently completed her M.Sc. at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. A big congratulations to Nayana on the publication of her M.Sc. work entitled "Effects of combined drought and heavy metal stresses on xylem structure and hydraulic conductivity in red maple (Acer rubrum L.)! Click here to read Nayana's paper.

[Summer, 2012] Rowland Lab Group Picture. From left to right, Owen Rowland, Fakhria M. Razeq, Bailey Paterson, Lena Watkins, Nayana De Silva, Sollapura Vishwanath, Micaela Chacon, and Ian Pulsifer.

[July 10, 2012] Congratulations to Sollapura Vishwanath for giving a great talk titled "Biosynthesis and functions of free and combined fatty alcohols associated with suberin" at the 20th International Symposium on Plant Lipids held July 8-13^th, 2012 in Seville, Spain. When not conferencing, Vishwa and Owen enjoyed the sites, sun, and tapas of Seville! Click here to see Vishwa’s presentation slides.

[June 17-23, 2012] Fakhria M. Razeq, Micaela Chacon, and Owen Rowland go on a road trip to work in John Ohlrogge’s lab at Michigan State University. They worked with Isabel Molina (Algoma Univ.) and Dylan Kosma (MSU) on analyzing the surface lipids of the emerging oilseed crop Camelina sativa. It was an intense but fun week of lab work and discussions in East Lansing, capped off with an “Oh Canada” party at John O’s house.

[June 5, 2012] Owen Rowland and colleague Frédéric Domergue (CNRS, University of Bordeaux) publish a much anticipated review on the biosynthesis, functions, and industrial applications of plant fatty alcohols. Read the article

[June 5, 2012] Congratulations to Ashley Fournier for becoming a Master of Science.  Ashley successfully defended her M.Sc. thesis titled "Substrate specificities of plant alcohol-forming fatty acyl reductases" on May 15, 2012. Ashley celebrated with a trip to Las Vegas… Best of luck in your future endeavours Ashley!

[May 30 – June 4, 2012] Owen Rowland presents our work on suberin-associated fatty alcohols at the 77^th Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology: The Biology of Plants. The message of the meeting was clear: a new golden age of plant biology is here with plant biotechnology playing a central role in solving worldwide problems related to food security, energy, sustainability, biodiversity, and human health.

[May 9, 2012] Ian Pulsifer is in Bordeaux, France visiting the Laboratoire de Biogenese Membranaire, CNRS, University of Bordeaux and working with our collaborator Frédéric Domergue. Ian has taken over their GC-MS for a week characterizing the activities of plant hot-dog fold type thioesterases expressed in E. coli. Ian’s trip is supported by a France-Canada Research Fund grant from The Embassy of France in Canada.  Ian is enjoying his trip to France, but says he misses gigantic Tim Horton’s coffees.