What is your favourite enzyme, and why?

I would say creatine kinase. We use up our ATP stores extremely quickly, and creatine phosphate is the second energy source. Its hydrolysis by creatine kinase provides sufficient energy after we’ve used up ATP.

 

What is your favourite book?

Stanley Park (by Timothy Taylor, 2001). I grew up in Vancouver. Because Vancouver is so mild, lots of homeless people live in this large urban park, and there’s also a large foody culture. This book is about a sous-chef in Vancouver who was frustrated by the boring food scene, so made a menu based on a typical menu of homeless people (with goose, squirrel, and other things like that).

 

What is the most recent book you’ve read?

They Called Me Number One (by Bev Sellars, 2013), about residential schools, and Cooked (by Michael Pollan, 2013).

 

What is your favourite amino acid, and why?

Proline- easy! It’s a disruptor and present in several of my favourite proteins, making alpha helices turn back on themselves.

 

What are some of your hobbies?

I like running (but not in the winter) and hockey. I’m also a wine guy- a sommelier- in my spare time. I love to travel to some wine regions. I also love being with my dog, who’s an Australian cattle dog.

 

What is your dream vacation?

The south of France in the summer for the wine, the sun, and the food.

 

What is the coolest project you’ve ever worked on?

I started it in my postdoctoral research and continued it into my own lab. I generated a series of fusion proteins- like molecular Lego to act as markers for lipoprotein assembly. They were mostly alpha helices and I fused smaller beta structure fragments, then tested to see if the recombined proteins would bind lipids. I found that small proteins of just 50 kDa or so could do the same job as one natural protein of more than 550 kDa, if the beta segment is from the right spot.

 

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in lab?

There are so many. When I was a grad student, I did Southern blots. You separate DNA in 2 cm thick agarose gels made on a big 20x20 plate. It takes hours, even overnight, to run the gel, and then you have to transport it to the UV imager in a dark room. I remember having the gel slide of the tray and onto the floor, in the dark, way more than once. You can hear the big flop, like a flipper, as it hits the floor, so everyone waiting outside the lab knows and is laughing hysterically - you have to start all over.

 

Do you have any advice or anything else you want to say?

Don’t expect your career trajectory to be a straight line: everything has hills and valleys, so accept that and don’t get too high in the highs or low in the lows.