Farewell to Jin

It was Jin’s last day, and we sent her off with a goodbye lunch. She is off to join Applied Biological Materials (ABM) in Richmond, BC where she will be doing some cool work in biotech.

Good luck, Jin! We will miss you!

 

A Two-Enzyme Pathway Links L-Arg to Nitric Oxide in N-Nitroso Biosynthesis

N-nitroso compounds are carcinogenic molecules previously thought to be made only through non-enzymatic routes. We investigated how the N-nitroso natural product streptozocin is constructed, and we revealed a new two-enzyme pathway that links L-arginine to production of nitric oxide. Congratulations to Hai-Yan and coauthors for their recent publication in JACS!

Mel Higgins receives the Founders Award from the ACS

UBC Chemistry Postdoctoral Fellow Mel Higgins received the 2019 Founders Award from the American Chemical Society Biological Chemistry Division. This award was established in memory of William P. Jencks’ contributions to mechanistic enzymology and is given to an outstanding PhD student or postdoctoral fellow in biological chemistry.

Mel presented her award lecture “Characterization of a heme-dependent N-N bond forming enzyme” at the Winter Enzymes Conference in New Orleans in January 2019.