User:Joel Weadge

Joel Weadge is an Associate Professor in the Biology Department at Wilfrid Laurier University. Dr. Weadge graduated with his B.Sc. from the University of Guelph and then went on to do his Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology at the same institution under Dr. Anthony Clarke, while studying peptidoglycan acetylesterases. Dr. Weadge then undertook a research fellowship appointment with Dr. Monica Palcic in the enzymology research group at Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he worked on structure-function relationships of glycosyltransferases responsible for blood group determination. He then joined Dr. Lynne Howell’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow in the Molecular Structure and Function program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto with CIHR and NSERC postdoctoral fellowships. While here, he continued to work on glycosyltransferases, carbohydrate esterase and acetyltransferases inherent in the alginate biosynthetic complex. Dr. Weadge’s diverse research experiences in the structure-function characterization of glycolic-enzymes and protein export apparati from a variety of carbohydrate systems (peptidoglycan, alginate, blood group antigens) form the basis for his group’s current research interests on cellulose, an exopolysaccharide found in bacterial biofilms.

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1. Gilbert HJ, Stålbrand H, and Brumer H. (2008). How the walls come crumbling down: recent structural biochemistry of plant polysaccharide degradation. Curr Opin Plant Biol. 2008;11(3):338-48. DOI:10.1016/j.pbi.2008.03.004 |