Warren W. Wakarchuk
Principal Investigator
Warren has been leading a glycobiology team since 1994. His expertise is in carbohydrate active enzymes, especially their structure and function. His team has been developing enzymes for the synthesis of bioactive molecules in vitro and in vivo. He is currently the Scientific Director of the not-for- profit enterprise GlycoNet, and GlycoNet integrated services. When not directing the team, he can be found cooking or playing guitar.
Nicole Thompson BSc
Technician
Nicole is a biochemistry COOP program graduate of Waterloo University. She is working on developing and characterizing the protein O-glycosylation performed by the synthetic OGO operons in E. coli. She is also working on cloning and characterizing a variety of glycosyltransferases for in vitro synthetic work.
Hirak Saxena PhD
Post-doctoral fellow
Hirak has taken on a lead role in unravelling the O-mannosylation in Actinobacteria. He is applying synthetic biology to studying the biochemistry of this process in the hope of working out if this modification is coupled to protein export, and if there is a communication component to the story. He has also been working on the in vitro remodelling of therapeutic protein glycans.
Won-Yong Song
PhD Candidate
Won-Yong is working on the role of protein mannosylation in the biochemistry of Actinobacteria. He is using synthetic biology to probe the function of the mannose in selected proteins functions. He is developing new methods to probe the role of mannosylation in Actinobacteria
Kajal Kamboj BSc
MSc candidate
Kajal is furthering the application of the O-glycan operon platform to engineer various cytokines. As part of the thesis work, some re-engineering of genes and target proteins is a major focus. Working with undergraduate project students she is also optimizing the growth conditions to yield maximum glycosylation.
