I chose biochemistry at McGill because I was interested in the natural world, and I wanted to do the most rigorous kind of studies of biology. For me, that was biochemistry, because it really drills down into how the molecules of life work.
Studying at McGill was a really nice time for me. I remember taking a picture of the class I was taking in Leacock 132 because it had more people than my entire high school. That was impressive to me. I made good friends and learned a lot.
To me that was the recognition; he was saying you are one of the guys that helped win this Nobel Prize.”
At McGill, I worked for Biochemistry Professor Jerry Pelletier for two summers. That was cool. I have a paper with him as a middle author – my first foray into research science.
This research experience helped me into Yale, where I did my MSc and PhD. When you show up at Yale, the profs give short talks about their labs, and that gave me my first real introduction to structural biology. It was breathtaking. You could see an enzyme – what it looked like, how it could work – using this really powerful high-resolution technique called X-ray crystallography.
So I joined what I felt was the most exciting X-ray crystallography group at Yale, Tom Steitz’s lab. This guy was a pioneer and a legend of structural biology. Tom’s team was undertaking their biggest challenge yet, X-ray crystallography of the mother of all enzymes – the ribosome. The main breakthrough came in 2000 with the first visualization of the ribosome. That gave us amazing nice first views, but you have to figure out what that means.
My main contribution was using that structure as a starting point and doing many experiments to get more views and figure out how the ribosome actually worked. For most of my PhD that’s what I was doing – getting enough pictures to understand exactly how the ribosome was working. Getting just one of these important crucial views can take between months and years, but with time we got good at it.
Tom won the Nobel Prize in 2009 for the ribosome work, sharing it with co-winners Venki Ramakrishnan (my postdoc supervisor) and Ada Yonath.
Having my paper mentioned as “the jewel in the crown” by the Nobel committee is very nice, but I’m more proud that Tom invited me to the Nobel Prize ceremony. He had only four tickets for trainees. To me that was the recognition; he was saying you are one of the guys that helped win this Nobel Prize.
Jumping in to help with Canada’s COVID-19 response
Early in the pandemic, one of my colleagues at McGill’s Centre de recherche en biologie structurale (CRBS) remarked that we could develop and produce tests for SARS-CoV-2, since we already make different enzymes and run different enzyme reactions.
In simple terms, to make a couple hundred enzyme reaction-based tests that work OK is not particularly challenging. But to supply testing labs with a robust test that’s going to work exactly the same over and over again, at a scale that’s useful to them, that becomes more challenging.
We want to help by making these tests domestically and making it possible for Canadians – including healthcare workers, students and everyday Canadians – to be tested on a larger scale.”
MI4 supported us with seed funding through their Emergency COVID-19 Research Funding Program, the Faculty of Science did likewise, and we got to work.
Dr. Don van Meyel (director of the Centre for Translational Biology at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre) and I quickly formed a team to develop the test, and started collaborating with the team of McGill alumnus Dr. Luke Masson (team leader of the National Research Council's Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre) to prepare for scale-up.
There are no made-in-Canada RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) tests. They’re mainly being made by multi-nationals and could be diverted away from Canada. So, we wanted to help by making these tests domestically and making it possible for Canadians – including healthcare workers, students and everyday Canadians – to be tested on a larger scale.
This is not a brand new SARS-CoV-2 test. What we’ve developed at McGill is a Canadian version of the gold standard.
Everyone’s put their normal research on hold to apply their substantial skills to this new challenge.”
The test was sent to the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg for verification, and it worked great. They deemed it suitable for use. That sounds low key but is as high praise as you officially get from that government lab.
At McGill, we made 15,000 tests – from A to Z, everything after the swabs – and delivered them to the Optilab MUHC (McGill clinical testing centre), which was our initial goal. That involved two parts – RNA extraction and RT-PCR.
It was really amazing to see these McGill professors, researchers and students come together and make fantastic progress. We had a team of around 50 talented McGillians working on the project. Everyone put their normal research on hold to apply their substantial skills to this new challenge. Plus, the McGill leadership and administration have gone above and beyond to facilitate. It was a remarkable team.
This was not just for the current pandemic. This will also give Canada the infrastructure and resources to be in a better position to deal with future pandemics because we now know how to do it. Now we can make the ingredients, and we have our recipe. The test is versatile and can help Canada respond quickly to other novel challenges to the health of Canadians.