Ice cream lab outing, Summer 2023

 

Aaron reinke, PHD

Associate Professor/Principal Investigator

I received my Ph.D. in 2012 from MIT, where I worked on protein-protein interactions in Amy Keating's lab. I then began  studies on microsporidia and C. elegans in the group of Emily Troemel at UCSD. I am excited to be in Toronto where I started the lab in September of 2017!

aaron.reinke@utoronto.ca

 
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Winnie Zhao

Lab technician

Winnie keeps the lab from falling apart.  She is also dissecting genetic pathways that induce an inherited immune response.

 

 
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Hala Tamim el jarkass, PHD  

Postdoctoral fellow

Hala is investigating interactions between bacteria and microsporidia infection

 

 
 
 

Angcy Xiao 

Molecular Genetics graduate student

Angcy is applying genomic approaches to investigate the natural variation in how C. elegans interacts with different microsporidia species.

Yin Chen Wan

Molecular Genetics graduate student

Yin is investigating genetic variants that contribute to disease susceptibility caused by bacterial pathogens.

 
 
 

Ed James, PhD

Postdoctoral fellow

Ed previously studied symbiosis between bacteria and aphids in the Wilson lab.  He is currently exploring the reliance of microsporidia on host metabolism.

Claire Turke

Molecular Genetics graduate student

Claire is investigating mechanisms of inherited immunity in Caenorhabditis elegans in response to microsporidia infection.

Jonathan Tersigni

Molecular Genetics graduate student

Jonathan is investigating mechanisms of microsporidia invasion and host specificity.

Qingyuan Huang

Southwest University graduate student

Qingyuan is identifying and characterizing small molecule inhibitors of microsporidia.

Xianzhi Meng

Southwest University visiting scholar

Xianzhi is looking at the diversity of nematode-infecting microsporidia using experimental and comparative genomic approaches.

 

Undergrads!:

Rui Qu- Undergraduate researcher
Maria Grigorescu- Undergraduate researcher

Carolyn Chen- Undergraduate researcher

Jessie Liu- Undergraduate researcher

Cindy Yu- lab assistant

Amel Al-Assal- lab assistant

Previous lab members:

Alex Willis, PhD

Dr. Calvin Mok, CAGEF Bioinformatics

Robert Luallen- Visiting scholar and assistant professor as San Diego State University     

Lina Wadi, msc

JiHae Jeon, Msc student

Eashwar Mohan - Msc student

Paul Lifotra- lab assistant

Jacquelyn Wang- Undergraduate researcher

Jason Jiang- Undergraduate researcher Stefanie Castelblanco- Undergraduate researcher

Larry Nguyen- Undergraduate researcher

Ronesh Sukhdeo- Undergraduate researcher

Brandon Murareanu- Undergraduate researcher Joseph Al Haddad - Undergraduate researcher Syed Ahmed- Undergraduate lab assistant
Kha Nguyen- Undergraduate lab assistant Urbowshe Mahmood- Undergraduate researcher
Nizar Islah- Undergraduate researcher
Shanzeh Ahmed- Undergraduate researcher

Lab Instagram feed:


On July 10th Hala defended her PhD thesis! We then celebrated with lots of delicious treats! Congratulations ๐ŸŽ‰ ๐Ÿ“œ
In June, Angcy, Ed, Hala, Winnie and Yin went to the 24th international C.elegans conference in Glasgow, Scotland! They had Greggs, learned a lot more about C. elegans and presented their own work too! ๐Ÿด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ ๐Ÿชฑ ๐Ÿ”ฌ ๐Ÿงฌ
The Reinke Lab tries Foldscopes! ๐Ÿ”ฌ ๐Ÿงฌ ๐Ÿชฑ
Santa came a little early this year ๐ŸŽ…๐Ÿผ! Happy Holidays everyone ๐Ÿ˜
The Reinke lab is back with subpar carving skills and excellent gluing skills! Under the sea ๐ŸŒŠ ๐Ÿ  ๐Ÿ™. Not sponsored by Dollarama (but could be?)
Celebrating everyone’s hard work this summer with some board games! ๐ŸŽฒ
Super proud of Stefanie, Ronesh, Larry, Jason, Jerry and Maria for their great work during the summer. They got to showcase all their hard work at the Undergraduate summer poster presentation today!๐Ÿชฑ ๐Ÿ”ฌ ๐Ÿงช
Ronesh and Hala were busy presenting their work at the “Metabolism, Aging, Pathogenesis and Stress in C. elegans” conference at the University of Wisconsin, Madison! ๐Ÿชฑ They were also selected to give a lightning round talk (60 seconds) o
๐ŸŽฅ ๐ŸŽฌ ๐Ÿ”ฌ ๐Ÿชฑ Exciting behind the scenes in lab today!
All you can eat sushi outing to bid farewell to Alex. We wish her all the success in her future endeavours. ๐Ÿฃ ๐Ÿ‘‹๐Ÿป ๐Ÿชฑ
Happy Holidays! Secret Santa was a success! ๐ŸŽ… ๐ŸŽ
We’re still here if not all in the same place. Stay safe everyone! #covฤฑd19 #flattenthecurve #telecommuting
Throwback to halloween. The team has limited carving skills so we chose to play to our strengths: super glue and paint. Hakuna Matata ๐Ÿฆ It’s the lion pump-king! ๐ŸŽƒ
A delayed post of our joint summer picnic with the Reinke and Claycomb Labs! It was a beautiful day for #picnicwars!
Alex, Winnie, Hala, Calvin and Jihae at the 22nd international worm meeting, spreading the word on how cool Microsporidia is and why C. elegans is a great model to study infection! #worm19
We had our first lab experience at #Worm19 this year! Many first-time attendees learning just how great this community is!
Is it a post-AYCE-sushi coma or a post-reclass slumber? #almostendlesscelebration
When you spend 2 hours being interviewed by 6 professors and forget basic motor skills #poorlysliced #babybites
Hala just reclassed to PhD! Thank you for enabling Friday unicorn straws and all you can eat sushi. #blessed #reinkelab #celegans @halatamim