Current Members
Igor Cestari, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
Associate Professor,
Institute of Parasitology, McGill University (website)
Associate Member, Department of Medicine, Division of Experimental Medicine, McGill University (website)
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Igor has a BSc. in biology with a specialty in genetics and MSc. and Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology.
Lissa Cruz-Saavedra, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Chagas disease vaccine and drug discovery
Lissa works on drug and vaccine discovery for Chagas disease. She also works studying signalling and regulatory processes underlying the control of antigenic variation in T. brucei.
Tony Isebe
Graduate Student
Mapping protein interactions using cross-link and mass spectrometry
Tony investigates the protein composition of telomeric expression sites using genetics, mass spectrometry, and microscopy approaches and their role in VSG gene compartmentalization and expression.
Mengjin Gao
Graduate Student
Phosphoinositide signalling and antigenic switching in trypanosomes
Jin investigates phosphoinositide signalling in trypanosomes with a focus on PI3Ks and nuclear signalling. He uses yeast surface display to identify phosphoinositide binding proteins and genetic and biochemical approaches in trypanosomes to dissect the role of phosphoinositide in VSG expression and switching.
Maia Sinkins
Graduate student
Chromatin organization and nuclear compartments
Maia is working on genome organization and chromatin compartmentalization. She uses chromatin conformation capture experiments, computational biology, and microscopy analysis to understand the organization of silent vs actively transcribed regions in trypanosomes.
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Mira Loock
Graduate Student
Identifying vaccine targets for Chagas disease using yeast surface display
Mira works on the discovery of new epitopes for Chagas disease vaccines. She uses yeast surface display to express T. cruzi genome-wide libraries and combines flow cytometry and nanopore sequencing to screen for epitopes recognized by antibodies from patients with Chagas disease. Mira uses experimental approaches to validate new antigens as candidates for a Chagas disease vaccine.
Larsen Iorgovits
Graduate student
Mechanisms of telomeric expression site activation in trypanosomes
Larsen investigates how phosphoinositide signalling regulates transcription of telomeric expression sites, which is important for T. brucei immune evasion by antigenic variation. He focuses on the proteins that control the monogenic transcription of VSG genes and the expression site compartmentalization.
Natalie Warren
Graduate student
Protein post-translational modifications in plant-biotic interactions.
Natalie is interested in protein post-translational regulation of enzymes in the jasmonate biosynthesis pathway. Jasmonates are phytohormones involved in plant defence signalling to necrotrophic pathogens and chewing herbivores. She is identifying enzyme post-translational modifications and the responsible kinase and phosphatase enzymes in the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana.
Supervised by Dr. Jacquie Bede, Plant Science
Co-supervised by Dr. Igor Cestari